New Product Features

[objeck]

Hey gang,

Over the holiday break, I will be scoping new product features to add to Objeck in 2023. So what, if any, of the features below interest you?

Thanks,
Randy

[ghost]

Eclipse IDE support will be implemented via the current Objeck language server?

[objeck]

I take a note to load Netbean on a VM and try it out. My dev machine has 128 GB of RAM.

[ghost]

128 GB of RAM? Eclipse can't be slow on such a machine!

[objeck]

I use a lot of virtualization

[ghost]

Unless it's some bugs with indexing that Eclipse is famous for (and corruption of the entire workspace too!).

[ghost]

I use a lot of virtualization

Didn't see your reply. Sorry.

[ghost]

The current approach to foreign library (C library) is currently similar to Java's JNI. If we could have something like JNA/JNR would it make things better?

[ghost]

My idea is write everything in pure Objeck without a line of C++, so a tool like JavaCPP for Objeck is also count. But it will definitely more complex than the JNA/JNR approach.

[objeck]

Thanks, not sure this is a high priority

[nsgnkhibdk2cls0f]

If I see this in option I will vote for it too!

[ghost]

I liked this idea.

[ghost]

It's using GObject Introspection (generating bindings from GIR) and JNA.

https://github.com/bailuk/java-gtk

It's useful to have something like JNA/JNR for Objeck.

[ghost]

It seems Objeck already supports GTK2?

https://github.com/objeck/objeck-lang/blob/master/core/compiler/lib_src/gtk2.obs

[ghost]

I'm a BASIC programmer. I coded in various BASIC dialects. I'm seeking for another language not BASIC that I could do small games and small gui apps. Now the small gui part is no longer, I think I will back to BASIC. I created a github account only because someone on the Basic4All forum told me I should have one. I will back to the forum. Goodbye.

(I asked many questions related to Java because I know this language is like Java and I wanted to know how much Java-like it is. I personally have nothing to do with Java. I still think having a web framework will good for the language's adoption though. Most popular languages like Python, Ruby,... have web frameworks and were used for web development. FastCGI? We on BASIC also have bindings for this very old C library! I'm impressed by the idea of a full stack language too. I don't want to learn too much. Maybe if I want to build for myself a small website in the future I will use something like Fantom! If I'm not on github, I will not find this gem. Thanks github.)

[nsgnkhibdk2cls0f]

I don't remember what I voted for. Perhaps fastcgi. What I have in mind at that time is actually a web framework, or I just voted randomly I don't know. I want to use this language to learn programming. A web framework is not needed for me. But at the time I voted I might think being able to write web application is cool. Today I rethink about it. Why do people asking the developer so much? He is not a company trying to sell his language. If there are enough users then, competent people will make for it all kind of things including a web framework. People working as professional developers for company will bring in the features of the languages and the tools they are using at work. When you like a language, you will want to code everything in it and use it all the time. If somehow the language developer could make a web framework, how many people will use it? You should have users first or have interesting features to attract users? What is cause what is effect? I don't know. What I know for sure is I'm not a competent programmer, uhm, not even a programmer yet.

[ghost]

@objeck If you are not yet give up on GTK3, may I ask you about the current progress? As I always suggested you to use GObject Introspection (https://gi.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) rather than parsing the GTK headers directly.

[ghost]

Something for inspiration.

https://github.com/bailuk/java-gtk/tree/gtk3 (main is already gtk4: https://github.com/bailuk/java-gtk)

It's using GObject Introspection (generating bindings from GIR) and JNA.

[objeck]

Working on GTK3 and embedded web server support in parallel. Once the frameworks are established, the code should require only minor refactoring.

[ghost]

About cross platform windowing support, will it be GTK3 or Qt5? There is now GTK4/LibAdwaita and Qt6 too. Most software is still at GTK3 and Qt5.

[ghost]

Objeck is C++, so it's not limited to plain C ABI like other languages. The choice is indeed much broader than just GTK or Qt.

[objeck]

I agree. The goal would be to pick a Windowing framework that is cross-platform and runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

[ghost]

Cross platform and supports Windows + macOS + Linux? You are describing pretty much any cross platform gui toolkits and frameworks in existent. I think by cross platform you need Android and iOS support too, but if it's only about the desktop OS like this then it's very easy. You will have to decide which to use since there are simply too many for you to choose from.

[objeck]

Targeting GTK3 first

[ghost]

You were right to target GTK3. GTK4 is currently not an option unless you want to play the game chase and catch with them.

[ghost]

Maybe you could get inspired by Ring language. I encountered it before Objeck. I liked it. But the community of it is mostly outside of github and I'm mostly on github so I skipped it. He even doesn't enable submitting of issues on github!

https://github.com/ring-lang/ring

[ghost]

By get inspired I mean get inspired from Ring's ecosystem, not the Ring language itself.

[ghost]

Ring has a Qt binding as it's listed here: https://wiki.qt.io/Language_Bindings#Qt_for_Ring_.28RingQt.29

[ghost]

FastCGI for Apache and IIS. What about Nginx? It's the most popular now.

[nsgnkhibdk2cls0f]

I personally have no need for a web framework (speaking for now). I only want to use Objeck to learn programming. Maybe this would change in the future, maybe not. I don't know how far I could go with programming 😁

[nsgnkhibdk2cls0f]

Maybe Objeck will support frontend programming as the dev is working to have it generate webasm. But I afraid it's not that easy. A quick Google search told me webasm has no access to the dom. So to be able to be a frontend language, Objeck will have to generate javascript instead of webasm.

[ghost]

Yes, WebAssembly has no direct access to the DOM. If you want Objeck to be used to develop webapps, you will need to have it able to generate JavaScript first @objeck @rhollines 😄

[objeck]

No, Objeck would/does support backend development like C# or Java via web queries. JavaScript should be used in the browser environment.

[ghost]

Then we misunderstood each other. You are talking about the backend and I'm thinking about the frontend. The frontend part is what really running on the users' browser, and thus I consider it's a webapp. A webapp indeed comprised of both the backend and frontend. So you are not wrong to said Objeck is able to develop webapps.

[ghost]

[ghost]

But the problem is, Objeck is a single man project. Can't compare it to enterprise backed languages like Java or Erlang. Adding another target maybe not a bad idea, but it will increase maintenance burden. And finally, who will use it? Who need this JVM target?

[ghost]

There is language supports compiling to JVM bytecode even though it's a standalone language and not benefit from the Java ecosystem (libraries + frameworks), thus it's not a JVM by definition, it just supports JVM target as one of the many targets it supports:

https://github.com/titzer/virgil

[ghost]

Java bytecode is very simple, I think it will not take much effort to maintain it.

[ghost]

Not performance or reusing of JVM frameworks and libraries, portability is an argument for the JVM target.

[ghost]

The same reason why people add support to target JavaScript and WebAssembly to their languages: portability (it will be able to run on the browsers or NodeJS/Deno).

[objeck]

No plans to retarget the language to run on the JVM or .net CLR. Consider the language "fast enough" with JIT compiler support.

[ghost]

I have the impression that it's a trend to implement your own WASM VM nowadays. What's wrong with people?

[ghost]

https://ziglang.org/news/goodbye-cpp/

[ghost]

WASI - WASM's operating system abstract layer: https://wasi.dev/

https://github.com/bytecodealliance/wasmtime/blob/main/docs/WASI-overview.md

[ghost]

https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen

[nsgnkhibdk2cls0f]

https://github.com/OpenSilver/OpenSilver

[objeck]

I keep benchmarks. Objeck is not slow but much faster than Python, and Ruby and is on par with Haskell GHC.

[objeck]

If there are bottlenecks the framework allows for optimizations, as done for the String library.

[nsgnkhibdk2cls0f]

The discord invite link is invalid again @objeck

[nsgnkhibdk2cls0f]

Not yet fixed @objeck

[objeck]

Thanks, it is working now.

[ghost]

Hope you success and have a lot of fun on your new endeavor with ML @objeck

[ghost]

Almost forgot, congratulate you on the first Objeck release of this year.

[objeck]

Thank you, it took a bit of effort to put things back together for a release. ML is going to be a process. I plan to follow Go and Java's strategy for building wrappers.

[ghost]

The holiday is over. I'm back.

[objeck]

Thanks for looking into this. I am pushing a new release today and will look at this next.

[objeck]

Thanks, I am looking into cross-platform windowing support now. I am also looking at the QT library. The solution chosen also needs to be compatible with Xcode.

[ghost]

dwindows is not easy to wrap as you think. Another issue with it is lack of documentation. If you successfully wrapped it, how would you will use it later?

[objeck]

Maybe, QML / Qt Quick bindings?

[ghost]

Maybe, QML / Qt Quick bindings?

I have no problems with it. My only suggestion is support both Qt5 and Qt6.

[ghost]

Maybe, QML / Qt Quick bindings?

If you could do it. So far I only see you do C based library bindings (openssl, odbc, sdl2,...). They are also small to intermediate size. Qt is something very big, even only the QML / Qt Quick subset.

[objeck]

The QML model seems similar to the client/server HTTP model.

Meaning UI and calls to the backend are architecturally separated. The backend does not need to know what controls sent the data; just process the data sent, and formulate a response. This model seems clean, but I still need to play around with the code.

[ghost]

What do you think about wxWidgets?

[ghost]

There are also many new libraries like:

https://github.com/cnjinhao/nana

https://github.com/idea4good/GuiLite

Don't limit yourself to the old solutions like GTK+, Qt,...

[ghost]

The problem is established solutions like GTK+, Qt,... will always there but random libraries on Github could be disappeared anytime. nanapro has enough users to make sure it will be maintained in the future, they even developed many GUI Designer for it:

https://github.com/FireFlyForLife/NanaDesigner

https://github.com/besh81/nana-creator

But I'm not sure about the OpenGL/SDL2 based GUI libraries you listed below. Uhm, imgui and nanogui are pretty famous. I have no experience with other libraries you listed. You simply listed too many libraries, have a look at them will pretty much take a day.

WebView based UI is a good solution to consider, too.

[ghost]

You mentioned raylib on another thread, it has a GUI library too: https://github.com/raysan5/raygui

[ghost]

What about OpenGL/SDL2 based GUI libraries?

https://github.com/ocornut/imgui

https://github.com/mitsuba-renderer/nanogui

https://github.com/dalerank/nanogui-sdl

https://github.com/MyGUI/mygui

They are C++. If you found it's hard to wrap C++ then this is in C: https://github.com/JulNadeauCA/libagar

The above are just examples. You can find many more via Google search with opengl based gui github and sdl2 based gui github.

Have a look at this too: https://cpp.libhunt.com/mygui-alternatives

Or you could write one yourself. You have SDL2 binding working already, isn't it?

Take this for inspiration (written in Java though): https://github.com/SpinyOwl/legui

Disclaimer: I don't ask you to do anything, the only thing I want to tell you is don't limit yourself to any specific libraries. Find the solution you liked best.

[ghost]

And don't forget WebView based UI too:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/

There are many more cross platform WebView based UI you could find on Github.

[ghost]

You said you liked coding games. What do you think about OpenGL or Vulkan bindings? Or you think the SDL2 abstraction is good enough?

[objeck]

It may take a while to ramp up.

However, I will go with GTK using the GObject introspection framework. It is mature, and there are plenty of language-binding examples. Using Qt breaks the paradigm of Objeck as QML is proprietary and pseudo-FLOSS. I will play around with GObject introspection over the coming weeks.

[objeck]

After looking at QT QML, I now think that Objeck should support web apps for desktop development.

This addresses three issues I have been struggling with:

1. Providing richer web server support, as I believe that the web is an important target
2. Cross-platform standards: QT is proprietary, GTK pseudo-cross-platform, and wxWidgets is tightly coupled with MSYS2
3. Wrapping cross-platform GUI frameworks is a legacy effort dating back over 25 years. I remember working for Quark in 1999, and they had an "xWindows" wrapper for Mac OS 9 and Windows.

[ghost]

So you are going to go the WebView based UI route? 😄

[ghost]

Please elaborate more what you are going to do. WebView UI like this?

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/

Or this?

https://github.com/webview/webview

Or something else? Electron? CEF?

[objeck]

Right now, I am working on better jQuery support... more to come.

[ghost]

A good resource for you if you gonna to port Objeck to many more operating systems someday:

https://github.com/cpredef/predef/blob/master/OperatingSystems.md

[ghost]

@objeck May I ask you why you shifted the direction from ML and Web to GTK?

[objeck]

I still support the web frameworks but have yet to spend too much time on ML. GTK will be a "one-time" effort after the code is generated and manually tweaked. Is there something specific you are interested in?

[ghost]

Nope. I'm just curious.

[objeck]

Here are two examples

Traditional map: (red-black tree), no additional generic information required for Insert and Find.

map := Map->New()<String, String>;
map->Insert("Hello", "World");
map->Find("Hello")->PrintLine();

Multimap: multiple values associated with one key. No additional generic information is required for Insert. However, additional type information is required for Find because it returns a generic Vector. I do not derive type information for nested generic; however, I type-check the information provided.

multi_map := MultiMap->New()<String, String>;
multi_map->Insert("Hello", "World");
multi_map->Insert("Hello", "Siri");
values := multi_map->Find("Hello")<String>;
each(value := values) {
   value->PrintLine();
}

[objeck]

For an expression moving left to right, the required information is first (i.e., instance names, operations, parameter values, etc.). On the right side is decorative or optional information (i.e., generic qualifiers, type casts, etc.). The language syntax does not mimic Java or C#, given their strong ties to C++ and C.

[ghost]

@objeck I noticed all *Holder types were renamed to *Ref isn't it?

[objeck]

Yes, the names were changed

[ghost]

It seems only the syntax file for Sublime was updated. What about updating syntax files for other editors?

[ghost]

@objeck Any progress on objeck/objeck-lsp#3? It's very unlikely those editors will support LSP over TCP.

[objeck]

Working on it now

[objeck]

Support was added in the last release

[ghost]

I know. I tracked your progress since you started it. I currently have some personal problems so I can't test the new lsp anytime soon. Sorry about that 😞

[objeck]

Thank you, please take care!

[ghost]

Finally, I migrated from Kate to Sublime too. Kate doesn't support setting environment variables like Sublime, and setting OBJECK_STDIO to binary globally caused so much trouble for me. I tried to use the wrapper script objeck_lsp.bat but it will degrade the language server's functionality on Kate (I have no idea why).

[ghost]

The trick to unstar then star the repository again helped you have more stars, but it couldn't help you have more users!

[objeck]

Not sure, but I understand. I "starred" the project by mistake. I was looking for who started the project.