[ANN] Idle Script - pre-alpha release

[Thomas Lauer <thomas.lauer@...>]

Folks, this is a pre-announcement for a package I will release later
next week to a broader audience. Idle is basically a script language
based on Lua. I am trying to iron out any howlers and remaining glitches
before releasing it, so anyone who is interested in this sort of
thing... please have a look (the current pre-alpha release is Windows
only) and drop me a note if you run into problems.

I realise that many, if not most, participants in this list are not
exactly part of my target audience but at least you'll know the
language;-)

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Idle is a scripting language based on the Lua core. It includes a few
extensions to the language but the main difference to Lua is the
integration of an extensive runtime library and the included compiler.

The project is focused on producing a small but powerful scripting
language that is easy to deploy and easy to use and that can produce
small, portable executable files. (Of course, it is always possible to
run Idle scripts through the interpreter.)

To this end the Idle compiler creates .exe files which only depend on
the Idle runtime DLL (which weighs in at less than 160 KB). A script of,
say, 50 KB will produce an executable of roundabout 35 to 40 KB that can
be run on other machines without the need of installing anything.

Idle supports the following features out of the box:

* full Perl-compatible regular expressions
* many operating system additions like file locking, directory walking,
  pipes, process creation, ...
* networking and sockets
* simple macro processing
* fully transparent reading of files and Idle code from inside archives
  (.zip and .7z archive types)
* dynamic call facility allows arbitrary calls into external DLLs
* interface to Perl and Tiny C
* multi-threading allows multiple Idle tasks running in parallel
* Win32 API functions (clipboard, registry, ...)
* and more.

Some of the functionality is based on existing products and libraries
(mostly Lua itself, the PCRE regular expression library, LuaSocket and
PhysicsFS).

This pre-alpha release is only available for systems running Windows
2000 and later versions.

More information, downloads and preliminary documentation:
http://idle.thomaslauer.com

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-- 
cheers  thomasl

web : http://thomaslauer.com/start