home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu.tar
/
ftp.cs.arizona.edu
/
icon
/
newsgrp
/
group96a.txt
/
000105_icon-group-sender _Wed Apr 24 13:18:49 1996.msg
< prev
next >
Wrap
Internet Message Format
|
1996-09-05
|
2KB
Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Wed, 24 Apr 1996 16:23:05 MST
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 1996 13:18:49 -0500
Message-Id: <199604241818.NAA24168@ns1.computek.net>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
From: gep2@computek.net
Subject: Re[2]: Why isn't Icon more widely used? -Reply
To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
X-Mailer: SPRY Mail Version: 04.00.06.17
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
Status: O
>Everyone is abuzz about HTML nowadays, so if something clever and new
could be accomplished in Icon, it might be a Golden Oppty. But what would
it be, exactly? What would it look like? Subroutine library? VBXs? Java
code? Web browser? Or something totally unheralded?
Well, for ONE thing, I'd like to see Icon replace Perl as _the_ premier tool for
writing CGI scripts. One step in the right direction would be a (probably
minor) adaptation to the interpreter to make it more "CGI efficient" (for
example, if it were possible to permit reusing the interpreter for multiple
applications in series without having to reload it each time).
>I personally would like to see Icon used in some way to enhance
TeX/LaTeX formatting for both paper and screen (HTML) output.
Certainly Icon would be a neat tool for writing a Web browser, but everybody and
their brother seems to be active there, and I doubt that Icon will compete
performance-wise with whatever others (e.g. Netscape) have done. Certainly it
would be relatively easy to make the Icon version more feature-rich, though.
>Some tools already exist, for example, to convert LaTeX into HTML and into
Adobe PDF (written in Perl, if I am not mistaken). What in this area could
better be done in Icon?
Icon (and SNOBOL4, for that matter) would be very good for conversions of this
sort, too. But I'd really like to see something like CGI, where Icon (perhaps
with a few minor tweaks) could meet (the vastly inferior) Perl head-on. I think
this is a highly volatile market segment which would be just as happy to learn
Icon as they are to learn Perl, and it would be a terrific foot-in-the-door.
Gordon Peterson
http://www.computek.net/public/gep2/