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Re: display vs write
On 02/03/2012 01:58 PM, Helmut Eller wrote:
* An HTML/XML obj can be insert into the output in visual
form if the console understands HTML. (I have a prototype
of this based on the JavaFX webnode component I'm working on
in my Day Job.)
Those don't seem particularly feasible/useful on a text terminal.
I don't want to design for lowest-common-denominator 1970s technology
- even if we all use it a lot.
* My idea for "Kawa-shell" functionality is to have expressions
that evaluate to process objects, which would be lazy strings.
This string would be the data from standard output. Thus the
effect of displaying a process object would be to print out
the standard output - just like a regular shell. Users would
find it confusing/annoying if shell output used quotes.
Well, I find it confusing/annoying when it turns out that (a b c) is not
a list with three symbols but a list with strings ("a" "b" "c").
I guess one could use display for top-level strings and not for
nested strings, but that seems even more awkward.
Regular shells also have job control commands. A shell without job
control that doesn't let me background/stop/kill processes is very
annoying.
I agree Kawa should handle ctrl/c (interrupt) smarter. We need to be
able to kill run-away processes or infinite output, without killing the
entire Kawa process. I've been thinking a bit about this. It would seem
to require separating the UI tread from the compile+eval thread.
Using JVMDI may be reasonable.
General csh-style job-control seems inappropriate. I'm mostly thinking
about using Kawa to replace shell scripts. A little like scsh but higher
level, like a shell, rather than as a general Posix API. Using a REPL
to run Unix commands would be possible, but it would be more verbose than sh
(though not as verbose as scsh).
On 02/03/2012 03:50 PM, Charles Turner wrote:
We could just default to WRITE in text mode console, and
DISPLAY in graphical ones.
I don't like that. I don't think we want that big a difference depending
on the console type. For one thing, consider the issue in terms of
documentation: The Kawa manual has some REPL examples.
--
--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com http://per.bothner.com/