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Guile scripting host?


Hi there,

On our beloved Win platform, there is the concept of 'scripting hosts':
programs that use scripting languages to enhance their functionality. These
languages, or 'scripting engines' are implemented through a couple of COM
interfaces, and are able to interact with objects from the 'ouside world',
like variables or COM components. You can even create a variable in one
scripting language, and use it from another.

With Win98 and NT5, and through some service packs for older versions you
get the 'scripting host'-mechanism, as well as 'scripting engines' for
Javascript and Visual Basic Script. Third-parties provide engines for Perl
(ActivePerl) and Python.

Now, I'm wondering if there's anyone working on building such an engine for
Scheme/Guile? I'm no Scheme/Guile expert by any means, but I might take this
challenge. Unfortunately, I have little time, so don't hold your breath...
Wouldn't it be cool to write ASP pages (MS's server side scripting language)
in Scheme, instead of using Javascript or, horrors, Visual Basic Script...

I think there's already a Win port of Guile, where can I find it?

As a related note, it seems that this 'scripting host' stuff aims at some of
the same things the Guile project aims at. But instead of trying to make
translators for any language to one language (ie. CTAX --> Guile), the
scripting engines implement their own parsing, and a mechanism is defined
for interacting with their scripting host (which may be MS-IIS (ASP),
Windows Scripting Host, or any prog you'd like to add scripting capability
to). Isn't the Scripting Engines approach a lot easier to implement than the
way Guile tries to do this? Are there any disadvantages to that approach?

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Cheers,
    Dirk-Jan.