Re: Interest in Lua Web Plug-in?

[David Given <dg@...>]

Thomas Harning Jr. wrote:
> I think this would be a great idea.  The company I work for would find
> this to be a great extension for what we're working on.  The basic
> requirement would have to be for compatibility w/ IE >= 6 (maybe just
> 7 by the time the plugin would be complete), Firefox >=2, and if at
> all possible, Safari.

Forgive me for saying this, but... what exactly is this plugin *for*? What
problem does it solve? Because as far as I can tell, in its current form it's
simply not going to work.

It goes like this:

- people do not have this plugin installed.
- a web site that uses this plugin will, therefore, have to force users to
install it.
- some people won't install it out of principle. Some people won't install it
because they can't be bothered. Some people won't install it because they
*can't* (how many platforms are you wanting to support?).
- therefore, unless your website works *without* the plugin --- which means
that there's no point in installing it --- then any website that requires it
is going to have viewer views than one which doesn't require it.

That's not to say that a system for allowing web page scripting to be done in
Lua wouldn't be really handy... but I don't think a plugin is the way to go.
(I don't think it can be. You'd have to support about a dozen different
platforms, and even then what about platforms that don't support plugins?)

What about a Lua->Javascript compiler? They're similar languages; it shouldn't
be too hard. Yes, Javascript is nasty but it's *everywhere*. It allows rich
interaction on just about everything --- I can use Google Maps on my Wii.
Being able to write code in Lua, with all of its RAD abilities, and then
deploy onto any web browser would be very cool. Take a look at Google Web
Toolkit sometime; it does this for Java. Unfortunately, Java is very
cumbersome for writing UIs in.

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