News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
	Week end development update

By Doug Baron, dougb@chilehead.com.

Dave,

This turned out to be a fun week. A lot of new stuff is up and running now:

1. Table windows. As with outlines, display is generally pretty ragged. But you can actually view the ODB! You can edit names and values, create and delete items, copy/copy/paste, etc. One caveat: right now, you can't create non-scalar values interactively, i.e. you have to run a script to create a new table, outline or script. Still, it will be a lot easier to test the language now.

2. The language supports fileloop. Bob has been careful to accommodate all flavors of Windows in the design and data structures.

Here's the really cool thing: on Windows, we get new functionality for free -- wildcards! Here's a script that works:

lang.new (tabletype, @root.scratchpad) fileloop (f in "c:/frontier/*.zip") scratchpad.[file.filefrompath (f)] = f lang.edit (@scratchpad)

I think the Mac folk will be clamoring for similar support. Hmmm....

3. Mouse dragging. Text selection and outline reorganizing are the big holes that were filled here. What a difference.

4. Lots of display improvements. Scrolling works, from both the scrollbars and the keyboard. The Home and End keys work -- PC-style. Also, no more orphaned flashing cursor. Better outline display. Many more fixes.

The overall usability of the product is much improved, both in terms of UI and scriptability. Bob is hard at work on making the packed data formats cross platform. Even when we're passing data across a network, there are binary data byte swapping issues that have to be dealt with. Ideally, we'd like to be able to open a Macintosh root on the PC and have everything work (that makes sense). That's the target. If we can get some level of connectivity going soon, it shouldn't be long before we're at the point of trying to get the core HTML Suite scripts working on the PC. Won't _that_ be cool!

Of course, we'll need to spend a certain amount of time on UI and display; you get this thing too usable, and the next thing you know it needs to be demoed! ;->

Doug

p.s. I just tried creating and opening a wptext window for the first time. Fixed a couple of bugs. Still doesn't work. Next build, probably.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Doug Baron Chilehead Software dougb@chilehead.com Menlo Park, CA