David Bovill wrote:
Richard below I am actually suggesting using npm as is - not simply
implementing a library in LiveCode. That way any node developer could get
up and running using LiveCode with a single "npm install livecode" call.
The Livecode package would be described in package.json and would install
the needed binaries / engines.
Unless LiveCode objects are directly interoperable with Node.js, what is
the advantage of that format?
JSON is a great solution for exchanging data between programs that don't
need to know much about each other's internals, a more streamlined
alternative to the role XML played just a few years ago.
Useful as plain-text representations are for exchanging data, programs
generally don't actually use the data until it's been de-serialized from
its plain-text format into a local object/array.
MongoDB uses BSON ("Binary JSON") for more efficient storage and
transfer, and in LiveCode we have what I like to call "LSON",
associative arrays serialized into a compact binary form with the
arrayEncode function.
The engine-level support for LSON is robust and very efficient,
performing probably at least an order of magnitude over any plain-texxt
representation like JSON.
The code to serialize and deserialize LSON is already written in C++ and
compiled into machine code in the engine - and better still,
field-tested for many years.
We have several JSON libraries in the community, and while they're
becoming more robust and efficient I don't believe it will ever be
possible for any scripted solution to perform as well as what we can do
today with LSON.
I appreciate the benefits of using existing standards, even de facto
ones, where relevant; for this reason I submitted an enhancement request
for BSONencode and BSONdecode as options for workflows where we
currently use only arrayEncode and arrayDecode:
<http://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=15678>
But unless the data contained within the format is useful within the
system for which the package manager was designed, it would seem the
benefits would be limited, and ultimately whether we choose npm or apt
or rpm would make little difference.
All that said, my experience with Node.js has been far from hands-on;
I've read only a hundred pages or so on it, but have never actually used
it for any practical task. Is there something in Node.js I may have
missed that would make it practical to exchange LiveCode objects with it?
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems
Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
____________________________________________________________________
ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com
_______________________________________________
use-livecode mailing list
use-livecode@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
