Warp wrote:
>   A "new SDL" doesn't necessarily mean a new scripting language which will
> look completely different from the current SDL, although I'm sure that
> whatever will be developed, there will be some differences, but only for
> the better.

Indeed, examples of things that will certainly change are all those little
bits and pieces where the language itself is inconsistent. I.e. in some
places we use [ ... ] for maps and in others we don't. And then there are
those objects where the syntax specifies the number of elements in advance,
which isn't (always) necessary at all, and in various cases just makes
hand-editing a scene hard. Then there are the bits and pieces where you
cannot actually use dot (aka ".something") syntax as expected. And so on,
and so on.

Plus of course, various directive issues, like the fun stuff you can do with
macros writing to files including macros (a kind of self-modifying code),
which makes parsing a mess, slow, and can even make it unreliable. And while
this may go, certainly there will be a way to parse from user-generated
strings instead (which is much easier to deal with). Oh, and even in 3.7 the
way (user generated) files are handled will, before the last beta, will
become more secure and predictable.

>   The user-defined functions in POV-Ray (which form their own syntax space,
> separate from the SDL, and which are about 100 times more efficient than
> #macros because they are byte-compiled) is a step towards the ultimate goal.

Plus, at long last there is a good and reliable VM technology available as
true open sources, in form of llvm (see llvm.org). So count on seeing that
as new backend for functions to appear the the (distant) future. At long
last we can then even support the famous "plug ins", *if* (AND ONLY IF!!!)
we decide we want that.

	Thorsten

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