LYNX-DEV JavaScript Update

[Barry Rountree]

Ok, now where was I...

At the moment, I have an interpreter that handles JS expressions.  This is
what I had a month ago as well, but found out very quickly that the way I
went about things disallowed some rather important features of the
language (e.g. "if", "while", function calls... I screwed up.)  So I
ripped out 40% of the whole, rebuilt, and now I'm ready to tackle
flow-of-control statements.  

It's like a compiler class, only without a book or a class.

Or much of a grammar, for that matter.  But I'm whining...

This is still an MS project, and I've promised my committee to stop
programming and start writing by the end of the month.  I am expected to
have the "core" language implemented.  Though I hate to make the
comparison, this is about equivalent to C without any libraries[*].  No
object-oriented stuff, no math functions, no whizzy-bang browser
manipulation routines.  Just a lynx-readable webpage with a digital clock
ticking away in the corner.  A nice proof of concept, certainly, and
that'll be sufficient for graduation.

I plan on making the interpreter available (GPL'ed) as soon as it can
handle a "for" loop.  It is NOT intended for inclusion in the devel code.
(No, I'm not forbidding it -- I just don't see how useful it would be
until it's much, much more functional.)

Slogging through this has been sufficiently fun (it's a LEARNING
EXPERIENCE!) that I'll probably keep pecking away at it through the end of
the year.  Progress has been glacial up to this point, though, and I don't
look for it to speed up.  (On the other hand, I've had four separate and
distinct restarts, and maybe, just maybe, I won't have to do that again.)  

That's where I am and that's where it's heading.  And now, a few
questions:

1)  What are the useful websites that are using JS?  (I'd like to get a
feel for which libraries being used and how often.)

2)  As HTML authors, if JS was suddenly and magically available in lynx,
what classes of commands would you use?

3)  [Flame here]  Does lynx really need JS anyway?

Not that I'm going to give up and get another Theater degree if everyone
answers "NO", but I have been giving some serious thought to this.  My
interpreter has a footprint of 60KB compared to a 3MB build of lynx.
That's 2% of the total size, and the interpreter will have to grow a lot
more before it's useful.  Now, how many *useful* websites actually use it?
How many lynx users even see a website with JS?  

Certainly I think this should be geared to a compile-time option, which
may be the ideal solution anyway.  If you want JS, Perl, or even a C
interpreter (yikes!), just set the switches and you'll be off and running.
This is far in the future, and I've really been jabbering quite a while
here...

Please reply privately to questions 1 & 2, and I'll summarize on request.

Barry Rountree
Florida State University

[*] JS doesn't really have libraries as such, but the term is close enough
for the moment.
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