[Millscript-developer] Pushing MillScript forward

[Stephen L. <sl...@op...>]

Hi all,

After the success of the FOSSL conference a couple of weeks ago, I'm  
itching to push MillScript forward and start building a community.   
Kevin has done a lot of work moving MillScript forward technically.   
And although the website looks clean enough, and has lots of  
information tucked away inside it, it's not aimed at building a  
community.

Several people have expressed an interest in taking Millscript into  
the Apache Software Foundation.  I asked Greg Stein, chairman of the  
ASF about this, and it is a possibility.  However, it's a competitive  
area (c.f. Velocity) and that means we would have to expect some  
pretty close scrutiny.  So it is just commonsense to make sure that  
it is possible for visitors to get a grip on what MillScript is all  
about.

So, this message is really an opening for a general conversation  
about what people would like to see done with the code, documentation  
and the web site and who would like to do what.

My own interests are in:

[1] Writing a introductory article that advocates the use of  
MillScript.  This would directly compare using MillScript against  
other scripting languages in the same general area.

[2] Writing a book on "Programming in OpenSpice" which is the parent  
specification for MillScript, towards which the separate  
implementations are converging.  This would not be the reference  
manual but programmer's guide.

[3] Developing the OpenSpice specification.  My main objectives are  
to keep OpenSpice extremely simple to learn, use and teach to others,  
whilst being a full-on 4th generation programming language.

[4] Bringing the most important innovations from OpenSpice into  
MillScript and vice versa.  For example, the virtual filing system  
work really deserves to become a standard part of OpenSpice.

[5] Creating and populating a wiki for MillScript.  One of my strong  
preferences is that it should be possible to process the wiki  
content.  This may necessitate writing our own Wiki software - which  
is not necessarily a big deal.  (In fact I have a lot of views about  
how wikis should work *lol*)

Well, that's more than enough for going on with.  What are other  
people interested in?

---
Steve