Re: 3.2: gjs/seed



Hi!

Am Donnerstag, den 28.04.2011, 18:38 -0400 schrieb Colin Walters:
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Colin Walters <walters verbum org> wrote:
> >
> > == Dynamic Languages in GNOME ==
> >
> > One thing that's worth addressing though (again) is the question "do
> > we need both Python and JavaScript?".  The uptake of both seed and gjs
> > has been relatively low; lower than Python at least for scripting
> > GNOME apps.  However, I think at least one the core reason for working
> > on JavaScript remains that *we define the platform*.

I think the "we define the platform" argument is really weak. Our whole
platform is written in C and we definitly don't define that platform.
You can include a lot of really old Unix API in C and nobody can prevent
you doing it. Sting handling is more or less completely broken in C and
still GString is only used in a few cases.
C++ has it's own implementation of containers and hash-tables which we
don't control either. Same for Python, same for more or less any
language despite probably Vala where we really control the language in
some ways. Still even Vala maps all kind of old-style Unix APIs.

Anyway, a responsible programmer will use the correct APIs if we promote
them and they are convenient. But many people have a prefered language
and will certainly stick to that language if possible. Python seems
popular among our community and is really actively promoted by Ubuntu
for example, so dropping it isn't an option at all.

Still I would agree that we should go for one JavaScript binding because
having two makes things unnecessary complex. If we don't have a
maintainer for gjs I agree with ebassi that Seed seems a natural choice
also giving the confusing that mozilla usually creates with their
external API and the fact that the rest of the desktop moved to WebKit.

Regards,
Johannes

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