[NTLK] newtonscript, NIE and confusion

From: Adam Short (ajs_at_orinoco.homelinux.org)
Date: Thu Apr 29 2004 - 01:48:23 PDT


Hi,

I've had my emate for just over a month now and I have to say I'm in
love with the little thing. Marvellous machine. There's just one or two
things I'm not so happy with. A lot of the software I've looked at was
written in the late 90s and doesn't really deal adequately with the
stuff I want to do today. Chatbuddy, while it's a fine application, is
obviously more suited to people used to poking the screen with a stylus,
rather than those (like me) who'd rather just tap away at the keys.
Also, I couldn't find a way to register it either, so it expired on me
the other day. All of this led me to decide to figure out the
intricacies of newtonscript and write my own. I write networking code
for a living, and I know the IRC protocol well enough that that side of
things shouldn't be a problem. What is concerning me though, is that
there don't seem to be any decent tutorials on using newtonscript with
NIE. I read the developers information from apple, and it seemed quite
sensible. I then downloaded Thumb, so I could look at actual,
functioning NIE code, and got a hell of a fright. What had looked so
simple in the apple pdf was now wrapped up in a monster finite state
machine and it took me a while just to figure out what was happening
where (why is something I've still not figured out).

I can write a finger client in tcl/tk in around 10 lines, 20-25 if a gui
is required. Even VB would only require around 50 lines (excluding gui
setup code). Why is Thumb so huge and convoluted? Does anyone have
examples of NIE code that isn't so difficult to follow? Once I've worked
out how to do the NIE stuff properly, everything else should be fine,
but for now I'm a little baffled.

I realise I've rambled somewhat, and I apologise for that, but if
someone could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

-- Adam Short - ajs at orinoco dot homelinux dot org

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