Re: [MacPerl] MacPerl shared lib?

[Matthias Ulrich Neeracher <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>]

Peter Folk <pfolk@uni.uiuc.edu> writes:
>I was thinking about how nice it would be to have little perl plug-ins to
>a number of programs that I use (BBEdit, Eudora, the new Navigator Gold
>editor)

For BBEdit extensions, writing glue packages is IMHO preferrable.

>and I started thinking about what kind of effort this would take. It doesn't
>seem that it would be all that much.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn;t have to do it himself :-)

>I see the API as follows:
>
>void MacPerl(char *script,
>             char *stdin,    // Available as STDIN.  The selected text, or
>                             //   the whole window if there's no selection...
>             int *len,       // Called with length of stdin buffer
>                             //   returns as length of stdout
>             char **stdout,  // Text put on STDOUT
>
>             int (*open)(char *, char *, int)
>                  // Callback to open a new output channel (window or file)
>                  //   Arguments: char *windowTitle,    /* or fileName */
>                  //              char *windowData,     /* or file data */
>                  //              int dataLength        /* length of above */
>                  // Replaces open(), if non-null.  Or maybe there should
>                  // be another function MacPerl'ToolOpen()...
>            );

In fact a library similar to this is used internally in the OSA component. I
call it "Palac" for "Perl a la carte".

>I'm not sure exactly if this is very good Mac programming (I suspect that
>script, stdin, stdout, and windowData should all be Handles or something),

In Palac, they are handles.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher   <neeri@iis.ee.ethz.ch>   http://www.iis.ee.ethz.ch/~neeri
   "One fine day in my odd past..." -- Pixies, _Planet of Sound_