Dropping Scheme with gimp 2.8?
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| Dropping Scheme with gimp 2.8? | Kevin Cozens | 14 Jan 00:13 |
| Dropping Scheme with gimp 2.8? | saulgoode@flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com | 15 Jan 13:02 |
| Dropping Scheme with gimp 2.8? | Kevin Cozens | 29 Jan 06:22 |
Dropping Scheme with gimp 2.8?
Seasons Greetings, Saul.
What would be the best way for me to participate in TinyScheme development?
The official webpage for TinyScheme is http://tinyscheme.sourceforge.net/. It is a SourceForge project so there is a mailing list, bug tracking system, and a version controlled source code repository.
I would suggest you join the mailing list. Its low (mostly zero) traffic. Get copies of the R5RS and R6RS documents. Take a look at the bug tracking system. Start going over the code to get a sense of how it operates. I still have to review it more thoroughly myself to better understand how the parsing and execution portions of the code.
There are a number of things that need to be done. I will to set up a wiki so there is a place for information about the project.
I realize (and endorse) that changes to Script-fu/TinyScheme should be quite limited
The changes to TinyScheme used in Script-Fu don't have to be limited but they have to be made carefully. Minimizing the changes from the official version makes it easier to apply changes made to the official version. Scheme standard Compliance changes can be applied to the official TinyScheme and also to the version used in Script-Fu. TinyScheme has to stay tiny so it can't just be changed to start using functions from glib.
One option to adding features that aren't that important to have, or which would be for GIMP/Script-Fu use only, is to use run-time loadable extensions.
however, there are a couple of issues* that I'd like to address and I am not sure how to go about it. It is not that I expect you to do the work, but I'd like to discuss it with you.
There is another person who has expressed interest in helping with Script-Fu/Tiny-Fu. If its a TinyScheme specific issue, you could use the TinyScheme mailing list. If its more of a Script-Fu related issue, you can discuss on this list.
Dimitrios added me as a project manager as of the end of last year. He isn't programming in C any more so that makes me the only "active" developer for TinyScheme.
If you do not have time at the moment, perhaps you could just make an announcement on gimp-dev when you start work on a new release
I will keep that in mind. One other person has offered to help with Script-Fu/Tiny-Fu. First, I need to write up some notes in my wiki about the future of Tiny-Fu and what needs to be done next.
There have been a lot of changes since the 1.39 release of TinyScheme so I am about to make a 1.40 release soon. There are one or two minor additional changes or bug fixes I am about to commit before the next release. Once I get the 1.40 release of TinyScheme out I will start thinking more about Tiny-Fu version 2.
* File I/O in Script-fu seems to be a little buggy.I have not been able to track down the problem
[snip]
I haven't been successful in determining the cause, nor have I tested TinyScheme itself to see if the problem exists upstream.
I have set up a build environment which allows the version of TinyScheme to be built and run outside of GIMP. It makes it easier to test for interpreter issues. I can help you set up the same build environment on your own machine so you can test if the problem is in TinyScheme or in Script-Fu.
Also, I would be interested in adding functions to TinyScheme for reading and writing raw characters.
That would be a useful thing to have. The functions could be added to the ftx extension used with Script-Fu/TinyScheme.
Finally, I'd like to add bitwise logical operators to TinyScheme.
Bitwise operations may not be in the R5RS but they are documented as part of the Scheme library for R6RS.
Dropping Scheme with gimp 2.8?
I'd like to apologize to the list. I had responded to Kevin off-list because most of my questions were specific to the upstream TinyScheme project and had only peripheral impact to Script-fu development. I probably should have posted to the list anyway (I have attached the contents of my original response if anyone is interested).
Quoting Kevin Cozens :
What would be the best way for me to participate in TinyScheme development?
The official webpage for TinyScheme is http://tinyscheme.sourceforge.net/. It is a SourceForge project so there is a mailing list, bug tracking system, and a version controlled source code repository.
Thanks for that info. I have joined the mailing list and look forward to greater participation now that I am aware of the proper channels (congratulations on your appointment as a project leader).
It would probably be helpful if the TinyScheme website (http://tinyscheme.sourceforge.net/home.html) contained a direct link to the project's SourceForge resource page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/tinyscheme/). I realize I can be dense at times, I was completely unaware of the mailing list, bug tracker, and forums existence despite searching for such things on several occasions over the last few years (I mistakenly concluded that TinyScheme was a merely "privately developed" project).
There are a number of things that need to be done. I will to set up a wiki so there is a place for information about the project.
I would be happy to contribute to such a wiki, and volunteer to help administer it if you should like.
The changes to TinyScheme used in Script-Fu don't have to be limited but they have to be made carefully. ... TinyScheme has to stay tiny so it can't just be changed to start using functions from glib.
One option to adding features that aren't that important to have, or which would be for GIMP/Script-Fu use only, is to use run-time loadable extensions.
There are so many good Scheme implementations out there -- Chicken, Racket, Bigloo, and GUILE seems to be making a resurgence -- that I do not foresee any desirability to greatly increasing TinyScheme's capabilities. I'm mainly interested in bug fixes and just a couple targeted enhancements which could readily be implemented with the run-time extensions.
For Script-fu, I think it is critical that it not change too drastically over time and that scripts do not come to rely upon features which are not provided by the software delivered with GIMP (or hard dependencies thereof), whether as TinyScheme extensions or external libraries.
To the topic of this thread, I think it would be foolhardy to remove Script-fu from GIMP anytime in near future and I am pleased to hear you also assert that. The issue is not whether "better" programming languages exist, but that Script-fu scripts can be relied upon to easily be installed and readily function with any distribution of GIMP on any platform. As long as Script-fu provides this cross-platform support and maintains its small memory footprint (~500Kb by my estimation), there is little to advocate its removal.
By the same token, if Script-fu scripts were to start proliferating which relied upon third-party libraries or customized compilations of GIMP (wherein unofficial TinyScheme extensions were employed) then Script-fu would lose one of its most important advantages over plug-ins written in C, Python, Perl, other implementations of Scheme, etc.
Should any other extension language aspire to replace Script-fu, it first should have to satisfy this "works with every GIMP" characteristic of Script-fu. Any GIMP feature which depends upon the operating system including the language support -- or the user installing such support characteristic -- is a tentative feature at best. Unless the language implementation ships with GIMP, this is unlikely to occur. Python probably comes closest, but even it is not deployed in a standardized manner across all platforms. This is more owing to version differences than platform differences, but net result is still the same -- it is not ensured that a Python plug-in that works on one OS will work on another (including different different distributions of GNU/Linux).
That is not to say there is anything wrong with any of these other languages (or other implementations of Scheme), but Script-fu is currently providing extensibility to GIMP that no other language has been able to match (and likely never able to). Continue to advocate your language of choice and freely share your plug-ins written in that language, ignoring that Script-fu even exists. However, if anyone wishes to advocate the *removal* of Script-fu then they should start by providing a self-contained implementation of the substitute language which can ship with GIMP, and be willing to support that implementation as Script-fu has been maintained over the years.
Dropping Scheme with gimp 2.8?
saulgoode@flashingtwelve.brickfilms.com wrote:
I'd like to apologize to the list. I had responded to Kevin off-list because most of my questions were specific to the upstream TinyScheme project and had only peripheral impact to Script-fu development.
That's partly my fault. The references to Script-Fu made me unsure whether the e-mail was only about TinyScheme or was also about Script-Fu. By the time I went to reply, I had already removed the part of your message saying you were mailing me off-list. With the way the list is configured, if I see [Gimp-developer] in the subject line I automatically send the reply to the list.
