RE: Translation for extension is a bad idea

[Brent Fulgham <brent dot fulgham at xpsystems dot com>]

> > First of all, it is to me unclear what the original goal of having
> > translators was --- or rather, which problem exactly would be solved
> > by having translators.  
> 

One example of such a problem is the case of users who wish a particular
language for extension that differs from the available languages on a 
platform.  For example, users might wish to use Tcl to extend your
program.  However, Tcl might not be embedded in your application and you
might not wish to spend time debugging the interface, learning the details
of the C->Tcl/Tcl->C API for embedding, and so forth.  In this case, it
is far preferable for the application developer to provide translation 
from the user's Tcl script to Scheme, which can then be run on the existing
embedded Scheme interpreter.

This is especially true where you have multiple users who each prefer a
different language for extension.  Linking to 'n' different interpreter
binaries, using 'n' different embed-API's and 'n' different sets of
interpreter quirks rapidly produces a massive problem space for the
application developer, and for debugging problems with a user's scripts.

Thanks,

-Brent