Haven't posted any announcements about my project here in a while, so now's as good a time as any.

So since 1.0 came out in August, there have been a few major bugfixes, and it's now technically at 1.1 because of a breaking change in the code generation for class declarations to fix a supercall bug.  It's also had some standard library functionality added, and some more useful stuff added to the native API as well.

What I've been working on most recently is (1) getting the thing to compile right under Linux with DSSS, and (2) rewriting the binding library to work around DMDWin's symbol length issues (*shakes fist*).  Let's go through them:

1) Most of the "getting it to compile right under Linux" was actually "me figuring out how the hell to get DSSS, GDC, and Tango to play nice on my computer".  Once I'd done that, it wasn't too difficult.  What I got out of this:

- Don't use 'dsss net install minid'.  It works, but since it blindly grabs the newest repo revision, which I may have been messing with, you might accidentally check out a nonfunctional or beta-y build of the library.  Much better is for you to check out the MiniD trunk manually, then change into its dir and do a 'dsss build && dsss install' there.  I have the latest stable repo listed on the front wiki page of the MiniD DSource page (see link at bottom).  In fact, for DSSS users on Windows, you should probably use the same procedure.

- I have no idea how to get bu[il]d to work on Linux, with either GDC or DMD.  And especially not with Tango.  I'm just completely stumped there.

2) The binding library design I was using before was like Pyd's, where you specify module/class members as variadic template parameter lists.  This was bad news with DMDWin, as it uses the terribly limited OMF object format and wrapping any module or class with more than ten or so members caused it to fail miserably.  Now it uses a style much like the _old_ Pyd, where you have a sort of "module/object under construction" which you add members to one at a time using chained method calls.  Because the MiniD binding library wasn't that complex to begin with I didn't have to sacrifice any features, so everything's cool, it's just the syntax has changed.

Along with that change, I also added support for wrapping structs (which appear as classes on the MiniD side).  There's also a lot more documentation on this library.

The last bit of news is that I'm now working on MiniD 2, since the v1 spec is frozen.  The development will probably follow a very similar trajectory to D's -- v1 will be supported, and will have bugfixes and maybe stdlib additions, but no changes to the language itself, while MD2 will be a moving target until it, too, has its spec frozen.  You can see some of the ideas I have for MD2 at the bottom of the Introduction page of the wiki (and feel free to come up with suggestions of your own!).

The project page for MiniD is here:  http://www.dsource.org/projects/minid

There you'll find the language spec, MiniD stdlib docs, native API docs, installation instructions, and other links.

Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:

> Haven't posted any announcements about my project here in a while, so now's as good a time as any.
> 
> So since 1.0 came out in August, there have been a few major bugfixes, and it's now technically at 1.1 because of a breaking change in the code generation for class declarations to fix a supercall bug.  It's also had some standard library functionality added, and some more useful stuff added to the native API as well.
> 
> What I've been working on most recently is (1) getting the thing to compile right under Linux with DSSS, and (2) rewriting the binding library to work around DMDWin's symbol length issues (*shakes fist*).  Let's go through them:
> 
> 1) Most of the "getting it to compile right under Linux" was actually "me figuring out how the hell to get DSSS, GDC, and Tango to play nice on my computer".  Once I'd done that, it wasn't too difficult.  What I got out of this:
> 
> - Don't use 'dsss net install minid'.  It works, but since it blindly grabs the newest repo revision, which I may have been messing with, you might accidentally check out a nonfunctional or beta-y build of the library.  Much better is for you to check out the MiniD trunk manually, then change into its dir and do a 'dsss build && dsss install' there.  I have the latest stable repo listed on the front wiki page of the MiniD DSource page (see link at bottom).  In fact, for DSSS users on Windows, you should probably use the same procedure.
> 
> - I have no idea how to get bu[il]d to work on Linux, with either GDC or DMD.  And especially not with Tango.  I'm just completely stumped there.
> 
> 2) The binding library design I was using before was like Pyd's, where you specify module/class members as variadic template parameter lists.  This was bad news with DMDWin, as it uses the terribly limited OMF object format and wrapping any module or class with more than ten or so members caused it to fail miserably.  Now it uses a style much like the _old_ Pyd, where you have a sort of "module/object under construction" which you add members to one at a time using chained method calls.  Because the MiniD binding library wasn't that complex to begin with I didn't have to sacrifice any features, so everything's cool, it's just the syntax has changed.
> 
> Along with that change, I also added support for wrapping structs (which appear as classes on the MiniD side).  There's also a lot more documentation on this library.
> 
> The last bit of news is that I'm now working on MiniD 2, since the v1 spec is frozen.  The development will probably follow a very similar trajectory to D's -- v1 will be supported, and will have bugfixes and maybe stdlib additions, but no changes to the language itself, while MD2 will be a moving target until it, too, has its spec frozen.  You can see some of the ideas I have for MD2 at the bottom of the Introduction page of the wiki (and feel free to come up with suggestions of your own!).
> 
> The project page for MiniD is here:  http://www.dsource.org/projects/minid
> 
> There you'll find the language spec, MiniD stdlib docs, native API docs, installation instructions, and other links.
> 

Nice! I'm considering using MiniD for a side project, and knowing it's in active development and integrates easily with D is important.

I can't seem to find anything on MiniD 2 on the Wiki; where's the link?

I'd like to thank you for your work on MiniD (and your quick responses
to requests).

MiniD is an important building block of my current project, and I've so far found it very pleasant to work with. Once you get used to it and get a hold of all the concepts, it's mostly a "simply works" experience.

If there's one thing MiniD lacks, it's a really comprehensive manual. I find myself looking at the source code to find out what a certain method really does. Still, large parts of the interface are fairly clear and self-documenting.

Keep it up :)

- -Sebastian

"Sebastian Beschke" <s.beschke@gmx.de> wrote in message news:fhuttd$uja$1@digitalmars.com...

>
> I'd like to thank you for your work on MiniD (and your quick responses
> to requests).
>
> MiniD is an important building block of my current project, and I've so far found it very pleasant to work with. Once you get used to it and get a hold of all the concepts, it's mostly a "simply works" experience.

:)

> If there's one thing MiniD lacks, it's a really comprehensive manual. I find myself looking at the source code to find out what a certain method really does. Still, large parts of the interface are fairly clear and self-documenting.
>
> Keep it up :)

I've been wanting to make an online "book" about MiniD similar to Ierusalimschy's "Programming in Lua".  Of course, I just haven't had the time :\

But in the meantime, if you have any questions about the documentation, what a method does, how to do something etc. _please_, please post something on the forums.  Nothing helps improve docs and code more than an extra pair of eyes :)

(also, are you "skabet"?)

Jarrett Billingsley schrieb:
> (also, are you "skabet"?)

I'm randomZ on the dsource forums.

Will MiniD support as much as possible of the D standard? If not, what are the reasons why one should not use DMDScript instead? (I can guess only one - license)

"Dejan Lekic" <dejan.lekic@gmail.com> wrote in message news:fi55nn$30pl$1@digitalmars.com...
> Will MiniD support as much as possible of the D standard?

MiniD's a scripting language in the vein of Lua and Squirrel.  Beyond some basic syntactic and semantic similarities to D, it bears little resemblance to it.

> If not, what are the reasons why one should not use DMDScript instead? (I can guess only one - license)

Even DMDScript has nothing to do with D.  For that matter, I have no idea why it's called DMDScript.  Because the D version is compiled with DMD?  Who knows.  It's an implementation of ECMAScript (JavaScript).

DMDScript is fine if you're making a DOM compatible web browser and not much else.  As you've mentioned, the license is an issue.  The native API is extremely basic.  ECMAScript itself is not often used outside of web scripting mostly because it's sort of a vanilla language with not many features.

MiniD as a language has a much richer set of features compared to ECMAScript.  The reference implementation has also been designed from the ground up to be truly integrated with D: it uses D's exceptions, D's GC, makes heavy use of templates, and is object-oriented.  No other scripting language implementation (even DMDScript) can make those claims when it comes to D.

Actually, if DMDScript was "open", I would never, ever think about using anything else for scripting in my applications. Simply because it works perfectly together with D.
Second candidate is DLua, of course.

"Dejan Lekic" <dejan.lekic@gmail.com> wrote in message news:fi6ekc$21qf$1@digitalmars.com...
> Actually, if DMDScript was "open", I would never, ever think about using
> anything else for scripting in my applications. Simply because it works
> perfectly together with D.
> Second candidate is DLua, of course.

No offense, but did you read my post?  DMDScript's D API is pretty terrible compared to MiniD's.  MiniD is the on that works perfectly together with D.

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Dejan Lekic" <dejan.lekic@gmail.com> wrote in message news:fi6ekc$21qf$1@digitalmars.com...
>> Actually, if DMDScript was "open", I would never, ever think about using anything else for scripting in my applications. Simply because it works perfectly together with D.
>> Second candidate is DLua, of course.
> 
> No offense, but did you read my post?  DMDScript's D API is pretty terrible compared to MiniD's.  MiniD is the on that works perfectly together with D. 
Defiantly a matter of opinion ;)

DMDScript just needs a bit of love:
- example of binding code for Phobos to DMDScript:
http://www.akbkhome.com/svn/gtkDS/wrap/APILookupPhobos.txt
- Adding objects (a bit outdated as the code generator does all the work for you)
http://www.akbkhome.com/blog.php/View/138/dmdscript__the_EMCAScript_javascript_engine_in_D__adding_objects.html

It's an odd balance for new languages, For all it's woes DMDScript implements a known language (so no relearning, or remembering another languages libraries or quirks)

Adding stuff to DMDScript is pretty quick now, - Hopefully some kind of System.exec()) and libtidy binding should be done next week.

Regards
Alan
> 
>