Re: LYNX-DEV Java/JavaScript

[Gregory S. Stark]

"T.E.Dickey" <address@hidden> writes:
> They won't be bundling Java (it's licensed from Sun).  Have they built
> their own JavaScript implementation?  (If not, the same applies).

Repeat after me: 
                Java != JavaScript 
                Java != JavaScript 
                Java != JavaScript

Actually I'm sure T.E. knew that but there was some confusion about that
earlier. 

One of the netscape developpers (JWZ I think) said on the mozilla licensing
newsgroup that netscape owns every line of JavaScript code and he would be
extremely surprised if any of it didn't make it into the mozilla release.
This makes sense since livescript predates the first Java code in NS.

I've looked at the ECMAScript spec and have some familiarity with NS and IE.
ECMAScript has a few minor differences from NS's implementation; NS has said
they intend to clean up those areas and make their implementation compliant.
MS claims their current engine is compliant. Both contain extensions to
ECMAScript though, for things like regular expressions and debugging. But MS
is mostly constrained to make their JScript compatible with NS's
implementation. 

However, this is all beside the point. ECMAScript specifies the only the
language, not the environment. Unfortunately the environment is the tricky
part. NS and IE have extensive object hierarchies to represent the browser and
the various widgets and features the script can manipulate. ECMAScript doesn't
specify any of this and it's where all the incompatibilities lie. 

These objects are also where most of the work of incorporating any scripting
language into Lynx lies. Many of the data structures in Lynx may well not
conveniently support being manipulated in the particular ways NS specified.
But it should be possible to do some things, like update other form fields,
submit forms, or go to other pages.

greg