[pd-discuss] Using an intermediate language for pdcalc proposal

Thu Mar 10 00:11:38 UTC 2011

Hello everyone,
I am a MediaWiki developer, and long time Wikimedia Commons contributor.
I am however new
to the pd calculators concept/project. Primavera explained it less than
an hour ago by irc.

My first idea was that it would be cool having that as a MediaWiki
extension installable in Commons.
pdcalc using python and mediawiki being php would make it a bit hard,
but the instructions are
really simple, so it would be a 1:1 mapping. It could even be done
automatically, using a python
parser.
However, the realization is that pdcalc doesn't need to be python at
all. Or even Turing-complete.
If it was coded into some basic intermediate language, it could be
easily compiled into python, php,
perl, ruby... whatever language you need. It would also allow some nice
features, such an interpreter
which instead of having all the variables set, goes asking you just when
they are present in a conditional.
Or recreating flowcharts from the code description (eg. compiling to
graphviz).

How does it sound to you?

Which features/syntax do you think such intermediate language should have?