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Planning work


From: Thomas Bushnell, BSG
Subject: Planning work
Date: 27 Apr 2001 17:29:00 -0700

I'm going to be working for the FSF this summer on guile translation
agents.  That is, the long-wanted translators for other languages into
guile.

The most important such translator will be Emacs Lisp, but it's also
crucial that that one be done right, and so it shouldn't be the first
one; experience should be learned before doing Emacs Lisp.

So my proposal to RMS was that I work on a Python translator; this
seems tractable (because Python has sufficiently clean data types and
semantics) and the sort of thing that would be immediately useful.

I won't be starting for a couple months, but right now I want to ask a
couple questions in the line of planning.

First, there is some kind of parser generator for guile, right?  My
recollection is that there is a such a beastie available through
dynamic linking.  Something has to be there such that this translator
can be used by any user in an Ordinary Guile-Using Application (OGUA).
So a dynamically linked thing is fine, as long as the OGUA can load
that: it can't require special cooperation from the OGUA author.  (For
clarity's sake, the point here is not the translation widget, but the
table-driven parser program, that must be dynamically loadable, if not
itself written in scheme.)

If there is some such kind of dynamic module necessary, it must be
added to Guile ASAP, or my work becomes dead in the water.  My work
should be machine independent, and be the sort of thing any guile user
could immediately start using, without requiring them to compile,
install, and all that jazz.

Second, is Python a good choice?  Is there any guile-ish discussion
about the task that would save me duplication of thought or effort?

Third, where can I find documentation (however scanty) on the guile
module system?

Thomas



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