Add Swift as a scripting language for TeXmacs?

#1

Are there any plans to do this?

#2

What do you mean? Internally? or as a plugin (like Python)? Maybe it could be possible to expose the internal interface between scheme and TeXmacs also to other languages, but it is not done. (It should not be difficult). Personally I would like to stick to scheme, I do not think there are real advantages to add more languages. Emacs lives very well with only elisp and browsers are flourishing with the awful javascript. And people still write bash scripts for the shell… What is important in swift in your opinion?

#3

Unlike Python, Swift is statically typed and has type inference. I have been using it for years and love it.

#4

I can understand the advantages for programming. And I agree that Swift can be cooler than Python. But what about C++, OCaml, Haskell, etc… then? But is it any good for scripting? static types or type inference seems less a killer feature in that domain. Does it work on Windows and Linux also? What will you do more if you would have Swift available in TeXmacs?

#5

I don’t want to sound harsh, sorry. I’m genunely interested in understanding what we can do more to attract developers - at any level. Implementing Swift support takes time, so I need to gauge the benefits of such an investment.

#6

It’s more high level than C++, avoids memory corruption issues, has better error messages, and has a debug mode for interactive programming and a release mode for optimized code.

See: https://github.com/apple/swift

#7

I don’t know whether Swift support will attract many open source developers.

#8

https://prog21.dadgum.com/219.html

#9

TeXmacs’s plugin can be implemented using any programming languages.

Here are some reasons why I use Python to re-implement some of the existing plugins:

  1. cross platform (works on macOS/Windows/Linux)
  2. there are existing plugins implemented using Python
  3. Python is popular

Ideally, plugins should be implemented in Scheme which brings no extra deps.