In <MPG.dbeb63e1cab1e39989772@news.demon.co.uk>,
cyber_surfer@gubbish.wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer) wrote:
> Yep, and the latest development is ActiveX (a new name for some old
> ideas from MS, i.e. OLE,OCX,etc). ActiveX Scripting is particularly
> neat, as it'll mean that Windows should be free of most of these
> language wars. Anyone who wants VBScript can have it, anyone who wants
> JavaScript have it, and so on, providing that the script language has
> been packaged as an ActiveX script engine and your app can use it
> ActiveX scripting.
Yup, it is. I've been working in an environment where applications
include a communications port for scripting languages to talk to
rather than a scripting language for most of the last decade. Any
application worthy of the name includes that facility (including web
browsers and web servers :-). Most programming languages (including
ports from Unix) include facilities to talk to these applications.
The result is that you can write scripts in pretty much anything you
want. However, the bundled scripting language (A Rexx, and I *added*
comp.lang.rexx to the newsgroups list) was designed for this kind of
environment. It sort of follows the TCL model of "everything is a
string", and a bare expression gets sent to the default application.
Further, the implementation was meant for this environment, so the
interpreter is written as a small application that includes commands
to launch scripts. The net result of this is that most scripts (mine,
anyway) are written in Rexx in spite of the availability of clearly
superior languages.
> Keep it up, people. You're making Windows stronger by the minute, by
> holding everything else back. Good luck to you - you may need it.
Windows isn't forever. Probably not even for the rest of my life. And
there'll always be a niche market of people for whom the "good enough"
sold by MS isn't.
<mike
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