Hi,
To complete the party, a few brief comments:
- at the moment, I'm not sure what approach to the eventual UI
frameworks (AS and JS side) will take. FlexJS is one but it doesn't
(yet) have the feel of something that meets the standards that Flex
users have come to expect.
- I'm sure that Google's Closure Tools provide us with a lot of the
language features that native JS is missing. The ones it doesn't
(easily) provide, we can have the compiler "replace" as that's what
compilers do, I understand ;-) After we've finished the unit tests for
FalconJx, we can focus on "goog" compatible JS output and create an -
I expect very small - utility class to make up for the difference.
- As we are using "goog" and Closure annotations to match AS language
features, using the rest of Google's Closure Tools is really low
hanging fruit. The Closure Compiler is not only a JS optimiser, it's
an actual compiler which provides much of the features usually only,
if at all, available if you use multiple libraries. The final piece is
the Closure Builder, which takes an entire "intermediate" (i.e. human
readable) JavaScript project and, combining all the tools in the
Closure set, outputs one JS file, culling out dead code and optimising
the remaining code. I've done a lot of studying on the Closure Tools
the last few weeks and have become convinced they will provide us with
a solid language base to start building the UI frameworks on.
Having said all that, I really welcome Frank's POC and I think that we
will soon be at a point where we can converge all our efforts and
figure out a common way forward, accepting input from all previous
trails.
Mike, a question: can the FalconJx compiler tell when a 'regular'
public variable is being accessed and when a public property (with
"get" and "set" methods) is being accessed? I'm asking this because if
it can, it would make it a whole lot easier and would require a whole
lot less workarounds to get that part of the language translation
done...
TL;DR: for now I'm moving ahead with "goog" as the basis for the
language translation, but I look forward to combining the various
efforts and starting the build of a suitable replacement for the Flex
SDK :-)
EdB
On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 7:23 PM, Michael Schmalle
<apa...@teotigraphix.com> wrote:
>
> Quoting Frank Wienberg <fr...@jangaroo.net>:
>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> as mentioned in another thread, I have been working on a new JavaScript
>> "runtime", which is what I call the way the generated JavaScript code
>> looks
>> and works like. While this thread's title has [FalconJx] in it, there is
>> no
>> reason the proposal could not be used for FalconJS, too, but I understood
>> that for now, using Google Closure is a given.
>
>
> Hi Frank,
>
> Just so you know I read this, I wanted to write a couple things.
>
> FalconJS uses the JBurg BURM which was donated by Adobe. I choose the route
> of an AST visitor framework that is handcoded for the sake of development
> ease and allowing myself to try something with the time I can a lot for this
> development. As far as I see, FalconJS is not being developed by anybody
> beyond the fact I read everywhere that it produces "js code". I guess if
> FlaconJS is going to be considered an alternative, there has to be
> developers that can work on it, I'm not one of them. I spent 1+ years
> learning antlr grammar and not about to figure out all the other
> prerequisites of the FalconJS code.
>
>
> That being said, I have to be honest that I am in no position to either
> agree or argue with what you have produced. Besides the years of hands on
> experience you have with JavaScript and ActionScript issues. I would say you
> have a thing or to to add here. :)
>
>
> It seems that right now, there are a handful of developers/community members
> involved in this topic of AS -> JS. I don't know what will change that but,
> it seems like we will need to decide on something that works sooner than
> later.
>
>
> The truth is, for me to understand what you have done and have an opinion I
> would probably need 2 or more weeks to understand what you have done. :)
>
> I'm probably in the position of, "Show me what you want to generate based on
> the semantics involved and I will generate it" mode.
>
> For me, my goal as it stands is to use what I have written to generate fully
> compilable ActionScript source code from Falcon's AST model. Once I have
> unit tested this, I can focus on the JavaScript side without thinking about
> what I have to implement to cover all the AS conversions.
>
> I wonder what Erik has to say... I would be interested since he has put time
> into investigation as well.
>
> So in closing, I really have not developed javascript applications. I'm
> interested in this project because having an HTML/JS target for Flex would
> allow me to do some of my audio experiments with an HTML Flex framework in
> the future for mobile applications.
>
> This allows me the excuse for myself to put as much time into it as I am. :)
>
> Mike
>
>
>> I had the following design goals:
>>
>> - Support ActionScript 3's "differentiator" features: private members,
>> interfaces + is/as, lazy class initialization, method binding,
>> getter/setter functions
>> - work in IE < 9 (except for getter/setter functions)
>> - Produce debuggable JavaScript code that can also be optimized for
>> deployment. The debuggable code should be very similar to the original
>> ActionScript source code for every line containing executable code
>> - Dependency management: load/bundle only the needed classes. Every
>> compilation unit to debug should load as a separate request
>> - Minimal to no runtime overhead, even in debug mode
>> - Support trace()
>>
>>
>> I took the following design decisions:
>>
>> - For private members, a mix of JavaScript lexical scope and field
>> renaming like in Jangaroo is used
>> - To implement an efficient "is" operator, all interfaces a class
>> implements are determined once for the class. I use a prototype chain
>> to
>> inherit the interfaces implemented by the super class
>> - Lazy class initialization uses a very efficient technique refined by
>> Olaf Kummer: Wherever a constructor or non-private static member is
>> called,
>> the "self-destructing" class initialization function is checked for
>> existence and, if still existing, called ("guarded" call)
>> - Method binding is again borrowed from the Jangaroo Runtime: the bound
>> function is "cached" at the object under a different but unique name so
>> that it keeps its identity. This is important e.g. to be able to remove
>> event listeners
>> - Getter/setter functions map to Object.defineProperty("...", { get:
>> ..., set: ...}), thus no support in IE < 9
>> - To make everything else work in IE < 9, I use polyfills for
>> ECMAScript
>> 5 Object, Array and Function API
>> - For keeping generated code in separate JS files, expressing
>> dependencies between these files, loading them separately at runtime
>> and
>> linking them statically into a single JavaScript file, I chose to use
>> Asynchronous Module Definitions (AMD) and RequireJS (version 2.1.2) as
>> the
>> concrete implementation of AMD. AMD is preferred over CommonJS because
>> it
>> better fits web applications, as e.g. argued here:
>>
>> http://blog.millermedeiros.com/amd-is-better-for-the-web-than-commonjs-modules/To
>> link and optimize the application, RequireJS provides an optimizer
>> tool
>> simply called "r.js".
>> - To conditionally load polyfills (for IE < 9), I use the "shim"
>> RequireJS plugin
>> - To achieve minimal runtime overhead, I only use helper functions to
>> define the class structure once (defineClass and defineInterface). As
>> soon
>> as the complete application structure is set up, all code executed is
>> inlined
>> - Since all modern browsers seem to support a "console" object with a
>> "log" method, trace() is simply implemented to check for the existence
>> of
>> console.log() by trial-and-error (try... catch). It then
>> String-converts
>> and concatenates all its arguments like its ActionScript sibling
>>
>>
>> *About the Example*
>>
>> To specify how I think FalconJx-generated JavaScript output should look
>> like, I created an ActionScript example, consisting of two classes and
>> three interfaces. Every language feature supported by the new runtime
>> format gives an appearance in the code (well, I didn't add a private
>> static
>> method, because it works like a private method, only simpler).
>> The whole thing is a public GitHub project at
>> https://github.com/fwienber/as-js-runtime-prototype.
>> To download all files in one go as a zip or tar.gz, please use the tag
>> page: https://github.com/fwienber/as-js-runtime-prototype/tags.
>>
>> A live demo is available on the corresponding GitHub pages at
>> http://fwienber.github.com/as-js-runtime-prototype/index.html
>> From there, you can reach all ActionScript example sources and the
>> proposed
>> JavaScript equivalent (so far, hand-coded :-)).
>> To see the example in action, use the three bottom links which start the
>> same application in three flavors:
>>
>> - debug: Each JS file corresponding to an AS class or interface and the
>> main bootstrap file is loaded with a single request. This gives you a
>> nice
>> 1:1 mapping of source to output in the JavaScript debugger.
>> Additionally,
>> there are some "infrastructure" files: require.js itself, the RequireJS
>> plugin "shim" (shim.js, shims.js), my AS3 runtime helpers
>> defineClass.js
>> and defineInterface.js, and a couple of built-in AS3 functions (bind,
>> as,
>> is, trace). If loading in IE < 9, the shim plugin loads several ES5
>> polyfills.
>> - linked: The whole application is merged into one JS file using the
>> RequireJS optimizer "r.js" without optimizations. Thus you only have
>> two
>> requests: require.js and hello-worls-all.js are loaded. In IE < 9, the
>> polyfills are still loaded one-by-one (I didn't bother to optimize this
>> case, but of course, it can be done).
>> - minified: Same as "linked", only that require.js and
>> hellow-world-all.js are minified by Uglify2. This can easily be
>> achieved
>> using "r.js" with the parameter optimize=uglify2.
>>
>>
>> For the demo, I redirected trace() from the JavaScript console (backed-up
>> in trace-console.js) to the DOM, so that you can see the log messages
>> directly.
>>
>> Just look into the code and observe how it works in Firebug or any other
>> JavaScript debugger of your choice, and let me know if anything is
>> unclear,
>> missing or if you need more reasoning for the design decisions taken.
>> I know there are still several issues to be fleshed out (e.g. interaction
>> with "native" JavaScript or package-scope variables, just to name two),
>> but
>> I think the current state is a solid core of how a modern, efficient,
>> self-contained, extensive and still concise JavaScript runtime format for
>> Apache Flex could look like.
>> Please tell me what you think!
>>
>> Have fun,
>> -Frank-
>>
>
> --
> Michael Schmalle - Teoti Graphix, LLC
> http://www.teotigraphix.com
> http://blog.teotigraphix.com
>
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