Re: A GUI Lua Interactive prompt using LuaInterface

["steve donovan" <steve.j.donovan@...>]

Sure ;) This is what happens; one whacks something together over a
long-ish weekend, and then it has to turn into an application ;)

The model to emulate is IPython (although I don't like its text-based
interface). Would be very cool if there was some support for code
completion, e.g. after 'obj.' hit <tab> and get a drop-down of all the
properties/methods available. Entirely possible, but probably only
with restrictions.

For example, how does one handle 'obj.method().'? Would have to
_evaluate_ the expression, cache that value (as __tmp_), examine its
members, evaluate '__tmp_.member' and finally remove the reference to
__tmp_. The issue (of course) is that obj.method() may have
side-efffects, and so we can't afford to re-evaluate it.  This sounds
a wee bit complicated for a first pass, however.

Some integration with Help would be useful, tho Lua lacks the
integrated support for documentation that Python has.  This leads to
the situation we have in LfW, where there are dozens of help files in
various formats, organized according to different conventions. Which
suggests the need for some kind of abstracted help layer; could be an
interesting project!

steve d.


On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 8:10 PM, Andrew Wilson <agrwagrw@gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve, you might want to name the panels so users can know without
> reading help want the panels do. Maybe name the panels Snippet Name,
> Snippet Text, and Interactive panel.
>
> AGRW
>
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 9:15 AM, RJP Computing <rjpcomputing@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 5:12 AM, steve donovan <steve.j.donovan@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi guys,
>>>
>>> People working with Windows are aware that the usual command-prompt is
>>> a less than friendly environment. Also, the usual Lua command prompt
>>> is not GUI-friendly, because it blocks in a read loop.
>>>
>>> lconsole is a GUI prompt based on ilua
>>> (http://lua-users.org/wiki/InteractiveLua) so expressions can be
>>> evaluated without a '=', and tables are pretty-printed by default. It
>>> works of course with any Windows Forms code, but I've also tested it
>>> with IUP, and it should work with any GUI toolkit.  It has a nice
>>> little code pane where you can quickly define functions and have them
>>> automatically saved.
>>>
>>> http://mysite.mweb.co.za/residents/sdonovan/lua/LuaInterfaceUtils.zip
>>>
>>> lconsole is also a demo of some useful utilities that make working
>>> with LuaInterface easier, such as import(), which works rather like
>>> C#'s using statement.
>>>
>>> I've also got a version of LuaInterface that works against
>>> LuaBinaries, backported to NET 1.1 (!) so that it has a reasonable
>>> chance of working on any modern Windows machine. It uses the Lua for
>>> Windows directory structure, so the dlls go into clibs, lua into
>>> lualibs, etc, if you unzip into the base directory (5.1) of a LfW
>>> install.
>>
>> Thanks for this, it will come in very handy for me. I don't use .NET at all,
>> but I sure don't mind using apps written in it. :)
>>
>> Well with this announcement I think it is time for a maintenance release of
>> Lua for Windows with LuaInterface support. Expect an announcement later
>> today.
>> --
>> Regards,
>> Ryan
>> RJP Computing
>>
>