Re: A89: Internet Link (New language?)
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Re: A89: Internet Link (New language?)
>As someone previously said, HTML is made for at least a 640x480 monitor, and
>pages often don't display correctly on that size. (example: acz.org). HTML is
>a bloated and messy language, and while that's OK for a 233 mhz computer with
>a hard drive that averages about three cents a meg, it simply won't do on a
>calc. While someone could write a simple HTML interpreter, I'd imagine
that it
>would hog a lot of memory. With a language designed for the calc, a LOT of
>space can be saved, and the look of the page will be nicer overall.
>
>I was also thinking that the language could be extremely easy. Someone
>mentioned having a tag on each line that looked something like this:
>
>(2Welcome to my page!)2
>
>Would display "Welcome to my Page!" in medium-sized letters. (The standard
>font for the calc. After some thinking, I decided that it could get easier,
>but be based on the same concept, where the first letter or character of any
>line would tell the TCML interpereter what to do:
>
>C
>3Welcome to my page!
>H
>B
>L
>2Do you enjoy calculator games? I do! And that's why I program them!
>
>This would display "Welcome to my page!" in large letters, centered on the
>screen. (The C). Then, it would make a line (the H) do a line break (the B)
>then display some body text in medium letters, left justified (the L). Having
>one element per command line would make the interpreter smaller and easier to
>write. Not only that, but having only ten or so tags would make it easy to
>use- one simple command sheet could cover the entire language!
>
>Now does that beat the crap out of HTML for simplicity, or what?
I think that this is the best idea that I've seen yet for TCML. The main
advantage is that this eliminates the parsing phase of displaying a web
page. Any browser would just run the first character through a case
statement, then jump to the appropriate display function. I have one
simple suggestion though. How about instead of using high numbered
characters (C, L, 2...) for tags, just using characters represented by
0x00, 0x04, 0x08... Then you could just use a jump table. Parsing one
line would take two or three instructions. The best way to write pages
would not be by hand -- since low ASCII characters are usually invisible --
but with a simple composer. It would probably be best written is Java, so
all platforms can use the same program. It would be even easier to write a
parser in Perl that would take the first character of each line and change
it from C to 0x04, L to 0x0c, etc. This standard has my vote and I would
be happy to write a Java composer.
--Nate
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