Re: [E-devel] RFC: embryo release in 2 weeks

[Viktor K. <vko...@gm...>]

On Mon, 2008-08-04 at 09:17 +1000, Carsten Haitzler wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Aug 2008 20:04:53 -0300 "Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri"
> <bar...@pr...> babbled:
> 
> > On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 7:51 PM, The Rasterman Carsten Haitzler
> > <ra...@ra...> wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2 Aug 2008 01:35:39 -0300 "Gustavo Sverzut Barbieri"
> > > <bar...@pr...> babbled:
> > >
> > >> > I wouldn't say lua isn't widespread, it's used in quite a few things
> > >> > including interface customization in World of Warcraft where it provides
> > >> > the power to do some pretty advanced user interfaces.
> > >>
> > >> Yes, it's not a small niche as Embryo, but know many people customizes
> > >> WoW? I know other games uses it as well, but now you compare all of
> > >> them together with number of web developers out there, it's so small
> > >> you can't even have a comparison.
> > >
> > > dude! lua is a brazilian invention! aren't you guys patriotic enough to back
> > > your own language! :) hehheheheheheh
> > 
> > :-P and if you want more arguments, Brazilian Digital TV standard uses
> > Lua for one of the interactive standard (lua + xml, the other being
> > java).
> > 
> > 
> > > seriously - look at where lua is ised - WoW, adobe photoshop (lightroom),
> > > sim city 4, crysis, farcry, homeworld 2...
> > 
> > some years ago it was very hard to find a small and lean js implementation.
> > 
> > 
> > > i think actually its heavy use in the game world says something about lua to
> > > me. the game authors are much more concerned about speed and efficiency than
> > > your average "web designer". sure - js may be a bit more accessible, but ...
> > > let's be realistic.. this is efl - e. they have had to learn edc and get to
> > > grips with a whole new api within a language... they are definitely the
> > > people willing to learn a little more.. :)
> > 
> > but maybe it's not up to them to decide? Maybe it was imposed by the
> > tech guys somehow (like at INdT, ProFUSION...), so they have to learn
> > EDC and {embryo,lua}.
> > 
> > 
> > > but as such - lua seems to be perfect. it's a small library, well supported,
> > > license is good, it's targetted at generally being embedded and sandboxed
> > > heavily, and being small and fast. it's definitely got a lot of the
> > > checkboxes filled... that's for sure.
> > 
> > JS will fill most of them too.
> > 
> > 
> > > personally i'd rather take the high road and take the best technical
> > > solution over one for political/publicity image purposes.
> > 
> > I think that both are at the same level, this is like optimizing the
> > code that is not the hot path, if it's not the hot path, make it
> > easier to read, to use, to understand... that's my point for JS.
> > 
> > That said, I don't care too much if it's JS or Lua, for me it would be
> > a minimally easier to use JS as I know the language, but I don't mind
> > using Lua. But we need to evaluate other options to end with
> > yet-another-embryo. Using JS will not impact badly, but can bring more
> > marketing and good public image to E to use something that people
> > know... as you were saying on the other threads, E needs more
> > developers, needs better marketing and these things can help.
> 
> ok - do we have a small stand-alone javascript engine library that comes with
> minimal/almost no bindings of its own (ie so its just an execution engine - not
> part of webkit etc. etc.) that is comparable to lua in speed/size etc.?


Rhino is java based, so that's out. Then we have SpiderMonkey, which is
currently used by gecko1.9. That's not as fast as webkit's engine. Then
there's tamarin, which is practically future proof, with its support for
ES4. However, it's not complete. I don't know of any other engines out
there.


>