Re: To Jeff/Uwe...just asking...

[kahl]

> 
>   > 
>   > Is it possible that one could, somehow,
>   > link directly to a scripting language? Perhaps add a new
>   > primitive called, say, @Script{scripting commands}? 
>   > I have no idea, as yet, how you could, if at all, communicate 
>   > anything back to Lout.
> 
> I'd have to defer to an operating systems expert here.  The only
> way I know to do this is via system(), but I'm no expert.  I would
> advise trying it with @Filter first and worrying about it only if
> the result is too slow.

Under UNIX, it might be possible to use a pair of named pipes.
(Start the interpreter first, with stdin and stdout
 redirected to two pipes with constant names,
 and use these names in a @Filter call to a shell script using ``cat''.
 Or hack a new @Filter-derived symbol that uses these names instead
 of the varying loutiXY.)
Just guessing, never tried....


However, I doubt the necessity if you have a fast machine.

I have an application that calls a natively compiled OCaml program for every
@Filter section, where the OCaml program reads the contents of the section,
appends one version of it to a cumulative output file,
and produces another version of it as output for Lout,
and it is tolerable with currently 230 calls in one document.
(OCaml is fast, file IO is slow).


Wolfram