Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Magnificalc Ecosystem Part 1: ExprTreeLib in JavaScript

I am pleased to announce that ExprTreeLib has been completely rewritten in JavaScript so it is now portable from web to desktop to mobile! Yippee! ExprTreeLib in JavaScript looks and feels somewhat similar to its Java counterpart, except that it takes less code to do something useful with JavaScript.
Here are some more updates for the Magnificalc Ecosystem:
  • PEGJS is used to generate the parser. The PEGJS version of the grammar was adapted from the ANTLR3 grammar and now fits better in the PEG style.
  • Appcelerator Titanium (http://developer.appcelerator.com) will now be used as the desktop and mobile app development tool. The JavaScript code will be run in Titanium on Android and in the browser for the web.
  • The Dojo Toolkit (http://dojotoolkit.org) is Magnificalc's official JavaScript toolkit. Dojo's libraries like Dijit, dojox.gfx, and the Editor packages make it quite desirable! Dojo is built on a rock-solid cross-browser core, so I never have to worry about browser compatibility issues, except when using HTML5 features.
  • The server side will be built with Django, Orbited, and MorbidQ. That way, plugins and saved settings will be "pushed" to the web application while it is loading (!), allowing for a completely asynchronous load.
Hope you're excited for what comes next! Part 2, the GraphGen tool, is already in development!