Re: Lua for non-programmers

[Gavin Wraith <gavin@...>]

> > Has anyone worked on or know of a project where non-programmers
> > would use Lua to accomplish a task?

A long while ago I devised a Lua-based language (Weave) for creating
web pages. The syntax the user was supposed to understand was
[[ ... ]] for text, { ... } for lists and built-in functions for
tags. A few people used it. However, it demanded some understanding
of HTML and CSS. So now I have moved on to something much simpler:
templates for web-pages, with variables replacing text
(see  http://www.wra1th.plus.com/man.html). All the user has to
do is provide a directory of files containing "equations" of
the form "<variable> = [[<text>]]". The Lua application that does
the merging does a loadfile on each file (of appropriate filetype)
in the directory and puts the merged file in the same directory,
and with the same filetype as, the template. It uses a GUI whereby
the user simply drags in the template file and the directory of
content-files. This scheme has the advantage that at the most
elementary level the only thing the user needs to understand is
the [[ ... ]] notation and the concept of assignment, but that the
whole power of Lua is still there to be exploited by more expert
users. Of course, all the ancillary files - css stylefiles, graphics
files etc - will be there with the template but the user need know
nothing about any of that.

This may not count as a proper example of non-programmers using Lua;
but it gives them the chance of using Lua, so to speak.

-- 
Gavin Wraith (gavin@wra1th.plus.com)
Home page: http://www.wra1th.plus.com/