[Geany] Scripting language for plug-ins

[Nick Treleaven]

On Mon, 7 Jan 2008 20:24:24 -0500
"John Gabriele" <jmg3000 at gmail.com> wrote:

> From what I can tell, Python's not too difficult to embed. Lua,
> though, seems to take to embedding like a fish to water. And it's
> small. And *fast* (check out this neat little benchmark
> http://www.timestretch.com/FractalBenchmark.html ). One note about

I think Lua scripting is a great match for Geany. Lua also seems to
be the fastest scripting language here (basic is compiled):

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/gp4/benchmark.php?test=all&lang=all&calc=Calculate&xfullcpu=1&xmem=1

Note: I enabled memory usage as part of the criteria, but even without
it Lua comes out very well vs. other scripting languages.

[...]
> Anyhow, a while ago I posted that I was waiting for Python support for
> Geany. I should probably take that back. Really, most of these
> commonly-used scripting languages are very similar except for syntax
> differences. There's variables, loops, functions, and so on. Python
> makes OO programming very easy, but I'm not sure how much OO features
> are really required for writing an average plug-in for a text editor.

I know someone who says you can simulate OOP fairly acceptably in Lua
(but haven't tried it myself). Link:
http://www.lua.org/pil/16.1.html

> Enrico, have you tried writing any plug-ins in Lua yet? I may try to
> take a crack at it this week.

I haven't written any yet, but I've been meaning to. (Personally it'd
be better for me if the Lua plugin was distributed with Geany because
then it would get rebuilt automatically each time we change the plugin
abi version - but for most users this isn't a problem).

Regards,
Nick