Re: Class structures

[Ivan Kolev <ikolev@...>]

I think a "standard" class system for Lua is something very needed. I
know that Lua is too flexible and there can be no "best" or "universal"
class system, but if the language is about to develop further (e.g. into
a full-feautured language for standalone application development, like
Python/Java/C#/Limbo), it can't do without this, as well as without
enough libraries (mostly GUI and an IDE/debugger). It doesn't matter
what exactly will be the syntax or the features of a class system, they
just have to be good enough (and they will be, if the system is produced
by a joint effort). However, it seems the Lua authors can not take up
such a task, so it's up to the community. And since LuaCheia has so few
supporters and makes so slow progress, it seems this won't happen any
time soon.

I feel very attracted to Lua (since I discovered it in 1999), and
especially with the latest version I think it would make a very good RAD
tool. I'm so determined to use it for serious standalone apps, that
whenever I find that I miss a basic tool or library, I start to develop
it. E.g., at the moment I have put together the bases for a test
framework, a descriptor library (sort of a reflection library), a class
system, a GUI library wrapper (since I'm tired of waiting to see which
GUI library will prevail, I decided to add an abstraction layer over all
of them), and an automated building tool (which is the most developed of
all, since I used it now for all of my other projects). I realize that
many people have developed such tools before, and if we joined efforts,
we might bring closer the idea of Lua as a powerful standalone RAD
language.

Regards,
Ivan


Daniel Silverstone wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have been working on a class and object heirarchy (I'll probably 
> either put it on the lua-users.org wiki or write an LTN for it 
> eventually) for my web application platform Aranha.
>
> I'm in the process of redesigning Aranha to split it into several 
> components. One of those (Aranha Azul) will be the core of the system 
> and will contain class and object systems.
>
> http://wiki.digital-scurf.org/Aranha
>
> The above wiki URL is where aranha's documentation is being slowly 
> assembled ready for the re-engineer. The class structure is described in 
> a subpage of that page and there are links to the test implementation.
>
> I would appreciate comments from people and bug reports if possible ;-)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Daniel