D made the cover of February Dr. Dobbs!

www.ddj.com

Walter a écrit :

> D made the cover of February Dr. Dobbs!
>
> www.ddj.com

Aoouuo !

Roland

Roland wrote:

> Walter a écrit :
>
> > D made the cover of February Dr. Dobbs!
> >
> > www.ddj.com
>
> Aoouuo !
>
> Roland

A concise, well-written article.  Congrats!

I only wish it were twice as long, and mentioned the existence of the alpha version compiler!


-BobC

Walter wrote:
> D made the cover of February Dr. Dobbs!
> 
> www.ddj.com

How do you think I found out about it?  8-)

Greetings, everyone.  I must say the concepts D brings about are really quite interesting.  I come from a background of web design, and my own book, the JavaScript Developer's Dictionary, should be on shelves in a couple months.  I'm fairly active in the Mozilla.org project as well, and I tinker around and study the WWW all the time.

So maybe I can bring an outsider's perspective to all this.

First off,  let me point out one particular misconception on the D web site.  The <code>...</code> tag, like many HTML elements, provides little more than stylistic appearance.  It is NOT meant to contain live code, only examples thereof.  The more appropriate element would be <object>...</object>.  If you intend the code to be interpreted, perhaps a <script type="application/x-d">...</script> element would be appropriate.

XML can handle scripting easily:  we simply use an <html:script>...</html:script> element.  The "html" part is an XML namespace.  I do not know how they relate to D or C++ namespaces.  But we typically define an XML namespace by using the prefix as a local name for an "xmlns" namespace:

<root xmlns="http://digitalmars/xml-namespaces/root"
      xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      >
<html:script type="text/javascript">
alert("Hello World")
</html:script>
</root>

Similarly, you could use <html:object><html:param /></html:object> elements if you decided not to go the scripting route.

XML also allows the use of processing instructions <?target data ?>, where target identifies the program supposed to execute the code.  PHP, for instance, uses <?php ?> (when you have the short form disabled). The data, for PHP anyway, indicates the code to execute.

Now, for a change of subject.  ECMAScript, popularly known by its Netscape-trademarked name JavaScript, and the W3C Document Object Model, are two of my favorite subjects.  (I wrote a whole book on them, and I still learn new facts quite often.)  I of course like the idea of mixing programming / scripting and markup languages together.

I alluded to using D as a scripting language for (X)HTML pages earlier.  I wonder if anyone has a working example of this I could see.  I'll tell you, from a JavaScript developer's perspective, the concept of contracts just blew me away.  I'm very very impressed by that, and it's one thing I already wish JavaScript could support easily.  Alas...

Personally, I'd go absolutely bonkers if someone could write an ECMAScript-compatible engine, like Mozilla.org's JavaScript1.5 beta engine.  I don't know if you guys have been able to write a D compiler in D yet (I understand break-even is a very significant milestone), but if C++ can handle interpretation of another language...  Of course, this whole paragraph is pipe dream stuff for a language whose compiler is in the alpha stage.

Likewise, I'd love to see a DOM implemetation as well one day.  That would require translating from the W3C DOM, particularly the IDL. Even if it's just determining the object tree, it'd be beautiful.

Am I insane to mention these things here, now?  Probably.  Do I understand what you guys talk about?  Somewhat.  Would I be able to help you in the development of the D language?  Only if it was in QA, most likely.

Am I interested in this project?  You betcha.  I've got my hands in a couple dozen other projects, but I do want to follow this one, at least peripherally.

I'll watch this thread for a few days, see what you guys think, and I'll keep in touch.  I hope I haven't insulted your intelligences with the above comments.  Bottom line is I like what I see, and I'd love to support you guys in building this language.  (No, not with money.  I don't have any.)

Alex Vincent
Vallejo, CA

"Alex Vincent" <jscript@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:3C3E994B.7020806@pacbell.net...

> First off,  let me point out one particular misconception on the D web site.  The <code>...</code> tag, like many HTML elements, provides little more than stylistic appearance.  It is NOT meant to contain live code, only examples thereof.  The more appropriate element would be <object>...</object>.  If you intend the code to be interpreted, perhaps a <script type="application/x-d">...</script> element would be
appropriate.

It's not intended to be interpreted - D is not a scripting language for Web. I believe it was introduced to allow writing of commented, syntax-colored samples, probably even with embedded diagrams and screenies, but still compileable. Usually you get two files - one .html and one with the source. Now, you get one .html which you can compile.

> Personally, I'd go absolutely bonkers if someone could write an ECMAScript-compatible engine, like Mozilla.org's JavaScript1.5 beta engine.  I don't know if you guys have been able to write a D compiler in D yet (I understand break-even is a very significant milestone), but if C++ can handle interpretation of another language...  Of course, this whole paragraph is pipe dream stuff for a language whose compiler is in the alpha stage.

This is an interesting idea. Some other D features (like slicing) could
also be used in ECMAScript-compatible language (DScript?). Definitely,
this is not something to happen in near future...

> Am I insane to mention these things here, now?  Probably.  Do I understand what you guys talk about?  Somewhat.  Would I be able to help you in the development of the D language?  Only if it was in QA, most likely.

You can share your ideas. Contribute code, sample programs. Translate APIs =)...

I too heard about D through the Dr. Dobbs article and was interested enough to checkout the website.

The embeded HTML stuff reminded me of a random thought I had a while ago:
rather than just put D source code inside of <code> and use HTML constructs
like <font> and <br> for "pretty printing", why not make the whole thing
XML?  I haven't thought about this in near enough detail (remember, a
"random thought") to say how it would work for everything, but the basic
idea is that instead of writing HTML code like
    <code>
    void hello(int times)
    {
        int i;
        for (i = 0; i<times; i++)
        {
            printf("Hello World!\n");
        }
    }
    </code>
you would instead write XML something like
    <d:function name="hello" type="void">
        <d:arg name="times" type="int" />
        <d:var name="i" type="int" />
        <dkwd:for init="i=0" test="i<times"; incr="i++">
            <d:call name="printf">
                <d:param value="Hello World!\n" type="string" />
            </d:call>
        </dkwd:for>
    </d:function>
With everything in XML you can use two different XSLT transforms: one to
generate D code to feed to the compiler, and another to generate HTML for
documentation.

   Dan

"Alex Vincent" <jscript@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:3C3E994B.7020806@pacbell.net...
> Walter wrote:
> > D made the cover of February Dr. Dobbs!
> >
> > www.ddj.com
>
> How do you think I found out about it?  8-)
>
> Greetings, everyone.  I must say the concepts D brings about are really quite interesting.  I come from a background of web design, and my own book, the JavaScript Developer's Dictionary, should be on shelves in a couple months.  I'm fairly active in the Mozilla.org project as well, and I tinker around and study the WWW all the time.
>
> So maybe I can bring an outsider's perspective to all this.
>
> First off,  let me point out one particular misconception on the D web site.  The <code>...</code> tag, like many HTML elements, provides little more than stylistic appearance.  It is NOT meant to contain live code, only examples thereof.  The more appropriate element would be <object>...</object>.  If you intend the code to be interpreted, perhaps a <script type="application/x-d">...</script> element would be
appropriate.
>
> XML can handle scripting easily:  we simply use an <html:script>...</html:script> element.  The "html" part is an XML namespace.  I do not know how they relate to D or C++ namespaces.  But we typically define an XML namespace by using the prefix as a local name for an "xmlns" namespace:
>
> <root xmlns="http://digitalmars/xml-namespaces/root"
>        xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
>        >
> <html:script type="text/javascript">
> alert("Hello World")
> </html:script>
> </root>
>
> Similarly, you could use <html:object><html:param /></html:object> elements if you decided not to go the scripting route.
>
> XML also allows the use of processing instructions <?target data ?>, where target identifies the program supposed to execute the code.  PHP, for instance, uses <?php ?> (when you have the short form disabled). The data, for PHP anyway, indicates the code to execute.
>
> Now, for a change of subject.  ECMAScript, popularly known by its Netscape-trademarked name JavaScript, and the W3C Document Object Model, are two of my favorite subjects.  (I wrote a whole book on them, and I still learn new facts quite often.)  I of course like the idea of mixing programming / scripting and markup languages together.
>
> I alluded to using D as a scripting language for (X)HTML pages earlier.
>   I wonder if anyone has a working example of this I could see.  I'll
> tell you, from a JavaScript developer's perspective, the concept of
> contracts just blew me away.  I'm very very impressed by that, and it's
> one thing I already wish JavaScript could support easily.  Alas...
>
> Personally, I'd go absolutely bonkers if someone could write an ECMAScript-compatible engine, like Mozilla.org's JavaScript1.5 beta engine.  I don't know if you guys have been able to write a D compiler in D yet (I understand break-even is a very significant milestone), but if C++ can handle interpretation of another language...  Of course, this whole paragraph is pipe dream stuff for a language whose compiler is in the alpha stage.
>
> Likewise, I'd love to see a DOM implemetation as well one day.  That would require translating from the W3C DOM, particularly the IDL. Even if it's just determining the object tree, it'd be beautiful.
>
> Am I insane to mention these things here, now?  Probably.  Do I understand what you guys talk about?  Somewhat.  Would I be able to help you in the development of the D language?  Only if it was in QA, most likely.
>
> Am I interested in this project?  You betcha.  I've got my hands in a couple dozen other projects, but I do want to follow this one, at least peripherally.
>
> I'll watch this thread for a few days, see what you guys think, and I'll keep in touch.  I hope I haven't insulted your intelligences with the above comments.  Bottom line is I like what I see, and I'd love to support you guys in building this language.  (No, not with money.  I don't have any.)
>
> Alex Vincent
> Vallejo, CA
>

"Alex Vincent" <jscript@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:3C3E994B.7020806@pacbell.net...
> First off,  let me point out one particular misconception on the D web site.  The <code>...</code> tag, like many HTML elements, provides little more than stylistic appearance.  It is NOT meant to contain live code, only examples thereof.  The more appropriate element would be <object>...</object>.  If you intend the code to be interpreted, perhaps a <script type="application/x-d">...</script> element would be
appropriate.

I did some research on this originally,  and could find no official way of doing it. The <code> tag seemed like a good idea at the time.


> XML can handle scripting easily:  we simply use an <html:script>...</html:script> element.  The "html" part is an XML namespace.  I do not know how they relate to D or C++ namespaces.  But we typically define an XML namespace by using the prefix as a local name for an "xmlns" namespace:
>
> <root xmlns="http://digitalmars/xml-namespaces/root"
>        xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
>        >
> <html:script type="text/javascript">
> alert("Hello World")
> </html:script>
> </root>
>
> Similarly, you could use <html:object><html:param /></html:object> elements if you decided not to go the scripting route.
>
> XML also allows the use of processing instructions <?target data ?>, where target identifies the program supposed to execute the code.  PHP, for instance, uses <?php ?> (when you have the short form disabled). The data, for PHP anyway, indicates the code to execute.

I am clueless when it comes to XML ...

> Now, for a change of subject.  ECMAScript, popularly known by its Netscape-trademarked name JavaScript, and the W3C Document Object Model, are two of my favorite subjects.  (I wrote a whole book on them, and I still learn new facts quite often.)  I of course like the idea of mixing programming / scripting and markup languages together.

I'm very familiar with ECMAScript, as I've written an implementation of it. It runs 10-20x faster than JavaScript. <g>


> I alluded to using D as a scripting language for (X)HTML pages earlier.
>   I wonder if anyone has a working example of this I could see.  I'll
> tell you, from a JavaScript developer's perspective, the concept of
> contracts just blew me away.  I'm very very impressed by that, and it's
> one thing I already wish JavaScript could support easily.  Alas...

I don't think D is suitable as a scripting language (I can get into why if
you want).

> Personally, I'd go absolutely bonkers if someone could write an ECMAScript-compatible engine, like Mozilla.org's JavaScript1.5 beta engine.

Already done. I can send you an executable for it next week, and am looking for customers for it. It's a clean room implementation, so no IP problems, and includes Microsoft jscript extensions. It even can be plugged into Explorer.


>  I don't know if you guys have been able to write a D compiler
> in D yet (I understand break-even is a very significant milestone),

No, it's in bootstrap mode in C++.

"J. Daniel Smith" <j_daniel_smith@deja.com> wrote in message news:a1n5rl$2g9q$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>I haven't thought about this in near enough detail (remember, a
> "random thought") to say how it would work for everything, but the basic
> idea is that instead of writing HTML code like
>     <code>
>     void hello(int times)
>     {
>         int i;
>         for (i = 0; i<times; i++)
>         {
>             printf("Hello World!\n");
>         }
>     }
>     </code>
> you would instead write XML something like
>     <d:function name="hello" type="void">
>         <d:arg name="times" type="int" />
>         <d:var name="i" type="int" />
>         <dkwd:for init="i=0" test="i<times"; incr="i++">
>             <d:call name="printf">
>                 <d:param value="Hello World!\n" type="string" />
>             </d:call>
>         </dkwd:for>
>     </d:function>

Er, I like the way the former looks better? <g>

"Walter" <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:a1o1hi$to$2@digitaldaemon.com...

> I don't think D is suitable as a scripting language (I can get into why if
> you want).

However a scripting language could be derived from D. Imagine
ECMAScript, but with things like DBC, "stricter" classes (as seen
in PHP), array slicing etc, borrowed from D - syntactically
as well.

Walter wrote:
> I did some research on this originally,  and could find no official way of
> doing it. The <code> tag seemed like a good idea at the time.

No biggie.  <object>...</object> is better, possibly with <param /> elements.  That's all.

> I am clueless when it comes to XML ...

I'll be more than happy to help you.

> I'm very familiar with ECMAScript, as I've written an implementation of it.
> It runs 10-20x faster than JavaScript. <g>

Do you mean JS in the browser, or Mozilla.org's standalone JS Engine in C++?

> I don't think D is suitable as a scripting language (I can get into why if
> you want).

Please do.  Incidentally, I like the way Pavel thinks in his reply to your thread...

> Already done. I can send you an executable for it next week, and am looking
> for customers for it. It's a clean room implementation, so no IP problems,
> and includes Microsoft jscript extensions. It even can be plugged into
> Explorer.

I'd love to get my hands on your implementation, see how it compares to the ECMAScript tests.

> No, it's in bootstrap mode in C++.

Let me guess:  D in D is when you call it a "beta".  8-)