built-in scripting languages

[Corey]

On Monday 22 January 2007 14:49, Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik wrote:
> Why is this even being discused... you have the ability to add anything to
> the phone once you get your hands on it... SO any scripting languages one
> desires can be added.
> 

It's true that you have the ability to add anything to the phone.

There's another important consideration to remember: OpenMoko is a platform
also; an inherent aspect of such a platform is that it always come shipped with
X standard api's available for developers. This is why FIC had to select a group
of components: gcc, glibc, xorg/kdrive, dbus and gtk, for instance.

They may decide that a scripting language would also be a necessary or
beneficial feature to include in the base/standard platform -- which, to answer
your question, is why this is even being discussed.


> Personaly by default there should be none. And let the user decide what he
> wants.
>

Choice is good.

And so is having a known/standard/default/static api and platform to build from;
when I begin writting commercial and/or free software for the OpenMoko, I will
design my software according the existing OpenMoko specs, and thereby
circumvent the necessity of having to verify that my customers/end users have
first installed the necessary scripting language, which would additionally 
circumvent the probability that your phone will end up with every scripting 
language known to man.


> So having lua on my system would be more or less pointless as I don't use it 
> myself. 
> 

Less than one meg of space would be potentially wasted, true enough in your
case. Know that there is probably plenty of other software on the OpenMoko
platform that you, yourself, will not be using.

Also realize that though _you_ may not be directly using this hypothetical
scripting language, it is more than likely that one or more of the standard
apps that ship with the phone will be using it, and that other 3rd party software
that you may or may not install may also be using it.