Transframe, now called ScriptV?  I guess it's gone commercial?  The FAQ below claims the language is public domain.  ScriptV is used in heavy-duty graphics work.

There is a comparison with Java and C++ online, withother papers.  What interests me is the seamless integration of dynamic and static typing.

Mark

http://www.visviva.com/transframe/intro.htm http://www.visviva.com/transframe/faq/faq2.htm http://www.transframe.com/developer/home.htm http://web.archive.org/web/19980222073615/www.transframe.com/forum/forum.htm

'Transframe, yet another language based on C and similar to C++, is designed in a different philosophy....Transframe unifies hybrid C and C++ concepts and provides a transformable abstraction vehicle...'

'The Transframe freeze/melt mechanism differs from other dynamic programming systems which require creation of two separate solutions, a prototype, which is thrown away, and a product. Magicframe is an integrated environment where the system evolves to maturity from prototype to product.'

'The language clarifies and unifies many concepts which are obscure or ad hoc in other programming languages. Examples are nested classes, object references, array types, and type dependency.'

'The syntax of Transframe follows conventional language design. Instead bringing about brand new concepts, Transframe provides a natural extension to the ordinary concepts that have been commonly used by other popular object-oriented programming languages. The syntax of Transframe is very similar to C++.'

'Transframe is an advanced, modern programming language, designed not only to support the traditionally recognized software practices and principles such as safety, portability, modularity, reusability, efficiency, maintainability, and information hiding, but also to meet the challenge of the future software development demands such as reflection, meta construction, domain-specificity, productivity with high-performance, and dynamic parametrism for open designs and implementations.'

'The design philosophy ... provide[s] ... a simple, transformable framework that can be adapted to various specific problem domains.'

'Transframe ... achieve[s] the power of dynamic typing for rapid development, but can also be transformed into static model to preserve the efficiency and quality of the current static typed languages [C++ and Eiffel runtime speed]. The gap between dynamic programming and static programming vanishes.'

This looks like it could be a very good language.  I think they really hit the nail on the head with most aspects of their design.  Many of the problems they quote from C++ I have run into myself.  They seem to have elegant solutions.

Have to wait for a compiler to emerge I guess.

Sean

"Mark Evans" <Mark_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:b64tvv$64r$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>
> Transframe, now called ScriptV?  I guess it's gone commercial?  The FAQ
below
> claims the language is public domain.  ScriptV is used in heavy-duty
graphics
> work.
>
> There is a comparison with Java and C++ online, withother papers.  What interests me is the seamless integration of dynamic and static typing.
>
> Mark
>
> http://www.visviva.com/transframe/intro.htm http://www.visviva.com/transframe/faq/faq2.htm http://www.transframe.com/developer/home.htm
>
http://web.archive.org/web/19980222073615/www.transframe.com/forum/forum.htm

I'm curious to know if Walter is actively scouring these links to languages for design ideas?

Or is it upon us to present design propositions for consideration?

Sean

> > http://www.visviva.com/transframe/intro.htm

I'd be curious about your thoughts.  The language looks interesting, but the whole dynamic typing thing seems to put it in a different place than D.  Anything specific catch your eye?

Bill

Sean L. Palmer wrote:
> I'm curious to know if Walter is actively scouring these links to languages
> for design ideas?
> 
> Or is it upon us to present design propositions for consideration?
> 
> Sean
> 
> 
>>>http://www.visviva.com/transframe/intro.htm
>>
> 
> 

Bill you missed the major point of all those snippets I carefully posted for you.  Transframe supports seamless prototype-to-production work via user control over the boundaries between dynamic and static typing.  Yes it will build statically typed programs.

This theme connects to earlier posts about Dylan.

Mark

Sean sent me several ideas from Transframe he sees as appealing.  I plan to read the spec more carefully when I get the time.  Sean's quick list was (hope you don't mind, Sean):

The way it deals with multiple inheritance
The way it unifies templates and subclassing
Its type system is unified (everything is a class or object, even functions,
uninstantiated templates, and basic types)
the way they did basic integers (int derives off one of the bits32 etc basic
bit types, but its actual size is not specified, but is queryable).
They use pascalesque declspecs.  ;)
The freeze/melt scheme sounds interesting.

I understand that you're highlighting the dynamic prototyping concept in Transframe.  I'm impressed by it, too.  It's probably the single most inovative feature of the language.  Over time, it might prove out to be useful, but my intuition says otherwise.  I find I'm nearly as productive in a statically typed language as in a dynamically typed one, so it seems to me that the potential benifit is quite limited.  The additional compiler complexity associated with the feature seems large.

Bill

Mark Evans wrote:
> Bill you missed the major point of all those snippets I carefully posted for
> you.  Transframe supports seamless prototype-to-production work via user control
> over the boundaries between dynamic and static typing.  Yes it will build
> statically typed programs.
> 
> This theme connects to earlier posts about Dylan.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 

Bill the reason I highlighted the type system was your explicit confusion about it.  I was not proposing dynamic typing for D, just providing help for you, and those similarly confused.

Everything that Transframe does can be done in 'freeze' or static mode, one presumes, so its design is worth a look.

Mark

I originally posted this privately by mistake. Sorry Bill!
That's not the only mistake I made today.  I inadvertently sent my private
Corporate Annual Self-Review Form to my whole team at work!  Talk about
embarrassing!!  3^{

The specific things I like about Transframe are:

The way it deals with multiple inheritance
The way it unifies templates and subclassing
Its type system is unified (everything is a class or object, even functions,
uninstantiated templates, and basic types)
the way they did basic integers (int derives off one of the bits32 etc basic
bit types, but its actual size is not specified, but is queryable).
They use pascalesque declspecs.  ;)
The freeze/melt scheme sounds interesting.  Basically control per-class or
per-function maybe whether it's optimized or not.  This is doable today but
only per-.obj file, and it's tricky enough that it discourages use.

Those are the things that stick out in my mind the day after.

Sean

"Bill Cox" <bill@viasic.com> wrote in message news:3E87FF06.3000902@viasic.com...
> I'd be curious about your thoughts.  The language looks interesting, but the whole dynamic typing thing seems to put it in a different place than D.  Anything specific catch your eye?
>
> Bill
>
> Sean L. Palmer wrote:
> > I'm curious to know if Walter is actively scouring these links to
languages
> > for design ideas?
> >
> > Or is it upon us to present design propositions for consideration?
> >
> > Sean
> >
> >
> >>>http://www.visviva.com/transframe/intro.htm
> >>
> >
> >
>