delight-general — discussion of the Delight language

Re: [Delight-general] New Github fork

[Peter Massey-P. <pla...@gm...>]

On 12/30/2013 03:09 AM, Thomas Leonard wrote:
> On 29 December 2013 16:24, Peter Massey-Plantinga
> <pla...@gm...> wrote:
>> I'm possibly interested in taking over or restarting activity on this
>> programming language. I love Python's syntax and D's features. I'll probably
>> make a github fork. It looks like the project hasn't been updated for a
>> while, so I'll probably start over. I just wanted to make sure that there
>> were no objections to me using the "Delight" name for a completely new
>> language based on the same principles.
> Sure, no problem. Starting over is probably a good plan. There were 3
> main features of Delight:
>
> - Python-like syntax
> - Safer (but still not perfect) handling of nulls
> - Object-capabilities security model (though I didn't know this at the time)
>
> Are you planning on keeping all of them, or just the syntax?
>
>
I had only been planning on keeping the syntax, but I'll do some 
research on how the latest version of D handles nulls and the 
Object-capabilities security model.

Of course if anyone wants to help, Github makes it easy to collaborate. 
Send me a pull request or ask to be a collaborator. My username  is 
pplantinga, so the project can be found at 
http://github.com/pplantinga/delight

Re: [Delight-general] New Github fork

[Thomas L. <ta...@gm...>]

On 29 December 2013 16:24, Peter Massey-Plantinga
<pla...@gm...> wrote:
> I'm possibly interested in taking over or restarting activity on this
> programming language. I love Python's syntax and D's features. I'll probably
> make a github fork. It looks like the project hasn't been updated for a
> while, so I'll probably start over. I just wanted to make sure that there
> were no objections to me using the "Delight" name for a completely new
> language based on the same principles.

Sure, no problem. Starting over is probably a good plan. There were 3
main features of Delight:

- Python-like syntax
- Safer (but still not perfect) handling of nulls
- Object-capabilities security model (though I didn't know this at the time)

Are you planning on keeping all of them, or just the syntax?


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard        http://0install.net/
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[Delight-general] New Github fork

[Peter Massey-P. <pla...@gm...>]

I'm possibly interested in taking over or restarting activity on this
programming language. I love Python's syntax and D's features. I'll
probably make a github fork. It looks like the project hasn't been updated
for a while, so I'll probably start over. I just wanted to make sure that
there were no objections to me using the "Delight" name for a completely
new language based on the same principles.

Re: [Delight-general] (no subject)

[Thomas L. <ta...@gm...>]

On 10 July 2011 04:15, srean <sre...@gm...> wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
>
>  now that LDC supports D2, will delight come alive again. I hope so.

Thanks good to know. Unfortunately, I don't have any time at the moment :-(


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard        http://0install.net/
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[Delight-general] (no subject)

[srean <sre...@gm...>]

Hi Thomas,

 now that LDC supports D2, will delight come alive again. I hope so.

srean

Re: [Delight-general] delight

[Thomas L. <ta...@gm...>]

2009/11/8 Dmitry <roh...@gm...>:
> Does is project dead?

Stalled, until gdc comes back to life, or LDC supports D2:

http://dsource.org/projects/ldc/ticket/229

In the meantime, I suggest anyone interested in Delight's security
model should check out E:

http://erights.org/

Don't be put off by the web-site; this is a seriously impressive
language! We should try to get some of these ideas into Delight one
day (but I have no time currently).


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		ROX desktop / Zero Install
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[Delight-general] Delight 0.3

[Thomas L. <ta...@gm...>]

Delight 0.3 is now out:

  http://delight.sourceforge.net/

The main changes are that it now uses dynamic libraries and supports
GObject linkage (mainly for GTK):

  http://delight.sourceforge.net/gtk.html


Changes to the compiler:

Assignments in if statements only worked for class/pointer types

    It tried to turn everything into a maybe type, even ints, etc.

Scan dynamic libraries for GC roots

    Code was disabled, and didn't compile. Also, it didn't work on 64-bit.

Don't require a ; after a continue statement

Add GObject linkage type

    Works like C, except that we don't mangle interface methods either. e.g.

    For example, this:

    	extern(GObject):
    		interface GtkWidget:
    			void show()

    	GObject obj
    	obj.show()

    becomes

    	gtk_widget_show(obj)

    Name is lower-cased, and an _ inserted before each upper case letter that
    follows a lower case one. Might need to way to state the stem explicitly
    for some types.

Added linkage to ClassDeclaration

    Don't allow implicit cast to Object unless the source interface
has D linkage.

Static, renamed, and selective imports were public

    Applied patch from D Issue 314.

Fixed some parsing errors for enums

    Note: "enum Foo extends string: ..." now parses, but the compiler
crashes later.

Fixed line number in error about global variables

Be stricter about function return types

    If a function is declared as returning "void", don't allow return
with an expression.
    Main.main must have a return type of void.

Modular handling of externals

    Instead of having the main module import the single dlt._externals file, it
    now imports files based on the type. For example, if you do:

    	import dlt.io: Printer

    	class Main:
    		in Printer stdout

    Then it calls '_externals.dlt.io.stdout()' to get the object. This avoids
    creating dependencies on modules and symbols we don't need, and
makes it easier
    to extend the library with new externals.

    A related change is that SystemExit is now part of object.d and
handled by the
    normal D main invoker. This was being handled by a method on the
old Externals
    object.

Allow maybe annotations even for D code

    Makes it easier to adapt D interfaces for Delight.

Only include core functions in libgphobo2.so.

    Only etc, gcc, internal are now included in the build, not std.

    This is because the .so file is needed at runtime, so you need to be able to
    get it without downloading the whole compiler. Therefore, it
should come with
    the (much smaller) Delight standard library. So the plan is:

    - libgphobo2.so contains only things that must be built with the compiler.
    - libdlt contains the rest.
    - libdlt is bundled with a copy of libgphobo2.so.

    There are therefore two copies of libgphobo2.so, which is why it
needs to be as
    small as possible.

Build libphobos.so shared library, not static libphobos.a

    See Gregor Richards' post:

      http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=43627

    Also:

      http://www.dsource.org/projects/tango/ticket/875

"cast(Foo) foo" gets a maybe type only if Foo is a class

    For pointers, no check is made whether the type is correct, so the
    result never becomes null.

Static imports by default

    import dlt.io		# static import
    import dlt.io: Printer	# symbol import
    import dlt.io: *		# D-style import all

    Suggested by Leonardo and others.

Don't require a ";" after a mixin

"catch (Exception ex):" becomes "catch Exception ex:"

Fixed printing of log statements (in error messages, etc)


Changes to the library:

Added GTK support

    GTK code goes in libdltgtk.so to avoid unnecessary dependencies if you don't
    want it. The main dlt.gtk interface is generated using the scripts
in the gen
    directory (but not automatically, since it requires pygtk).

    Example:

    import dlt.gtk: *

    class Main:
    	in Gtk gtk

    	void main(string[] args):
    		args = gtk.init_check(args)
    		auto w = gtk.gtkWindow()

    		w.set_title("Hello from Delight!")
    		w.show()

    		gtk.main()

Implemented fs.resolveRelativePath and fs.parent

Added stdin external

Removed string functions from core.

    D gets confused when a module with unit-tests is compiled with them off but
    imported into code with them on. dlt.core should not need module info.

    Also brought back the math functions, and added some imports required by the
    new stricter private imports.

Split out filesystem bits of dlt.io to dlt.fs

Split _externals into modules in their own package

Build libdlt as a shared library and bundle a copy of libgphobos2.so

    This is so that binaries don't need to depend on the compiler package.
    To reduce duplication (since the compiler and the library both contain
    libgphobos2.so now), most of the code has been moved from libgphobos2
    into libdlt.so.

format() now returns a string, not a char[]

Implemented reuse server socket parameter


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		ROX desktop / Zero Install
GPG: 9242 9807 C985 3C07 44A6  8B9A AE07 8280 59A5 3CC1

[Delight-general] Delight 0.2

[Thomas L. <ta...@gm...>]

OK, Delight 0.2 is now out with loads of changes!

http://delight.sourceforge.net/install.html

The really big change is that it's now based on D2 (the in-development
version of D) rather than the old D1. In particular, this means:

- New const/invariant system. See http://delight.sourceforge.net/types.html

- Strings are no longer of type char[], but invariant(char)[]. i.e.
strings never change (same as Python or Java).

- Closures work. If you define a nested function, it can still access
its parent's variables after the parent has returned.

- Tango doesn't support D2 (not even its D2 branch), so I converted
everything over to use Phobos. I couldn't live without the Layout
class, though, so I cut-and-pasted that in to the Delight standard
library. Might move back to Tango once it works.

Main other changes:

- "cast(Foo) x" now has the maybe type "Foo?". This is because it
returns null if x isn't a Foo.

- Assign-within-if (from D) works, and has been extended to provide a
safe way of removing the maybe qualifier:

  Details? lookup(string name):
  	...

  if Details details = lookup("fred"):
  	details.doSomething()
  else:
  	# "fred" not known

- inner classes and static inner classes now work.

- "x in dict" now has a maybe type (it's null if x isn't in the dictionary)

- anonymous functions work ("function(int x): x + 1"). This is like
lambda in Python.

- better support for parsing D code (mainly for importing, but it will
also now compile .d files if you ask it to)

- any object can be implicitly cast to Object (D doesn't allow this)

- treat empty arrays as "false", non-empty as "true". This is like
Python, but unlike D.

- null can't used used as an alternative for an empty array, []

- standard library supports simple networking:
http://delight.sourceforge.net/library.html


More docs on the web-page (and most existing ones updates):

- http://delight.sourceforge.net/logging.html
- http://delight.sourceforge.net/types.html


-- 
Dr Thomas Leonard		ROX desktop / Zero Install
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