« BackThe Unicon Programming Languagebtiffin.users.sourceforge.netSubmitted by andsoitis 7 days ago
  • smartmic 6 days ago

    I stumbled upon Unicon because I installed the noweb [1] literate programming system from scratch some time ago. It uses Icon as an (optional) dependency to create cross-references during the weaving process. The fallback is based on Awk, but inferior in features. Anyway, if you have read this far, you should check out noweb and of course (Un)Icon.

    [1] https://github.com/nrnrnr/noweb

    • frizlab 6 days ago

      Oh silly me who read unicorn language for a long time before getting it…

      • cryptonector 6 days ago

        Icon (and therefore Unicon) is one of my favorite languages. It's remarkable the parallels between Prolog, Icon, jq, and Verse.

        • Qem 6 days ago

          Some days ago I tried to install from the PPA repository, but it appears Ubuntu jammy derivatives are not supported yet. Is there a PPA update estimate?

          I read Python stole its generators from Icon. Being an enthusiastic user of the itertools module, was curious to see how do generators work on Unicon/Icon.

        • cdaringe 6 days ago

          Seems pretty excellent for an old jalopy.

          • anthk 6 days ago

            Add XFT support and this language would be cool to have a fast RAD development with easy crosscompilation.

            • skissane 6 days ago

              > Add XFT support and this language would be cool to have a fast RAD development with easy crosscompilation.

              What is "XFT support" in this context?

              • Onavo 6 days ago

                LLM code gen, presumably

                https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.15247

                • andsoitis 6 days ago

                  The poster wrote “RAD development”, which implies highly visual development environments for making client side apps eg for desktop , mobile, or web. Xft is a library that draws text and graphics. That’s what I thought the poster referred to because in the article the text rendering is pretty poor. Addressing font rendering is critical to get perfect for a RAD / visual development tool.

                  So I also think the poster’s statement is ambiguous.

                  • anthk 6 days ago

                    No. TTF/OTF support for widgets.

                    • skissane 5 days ago

                      I assume you meant to write "XTF" (where X=T or O) not "XFT" then.

                      Although even then, using XTF as an abbreviation for TTF/OTF is highly nonstandard. Those four extra characters greatly increase the likelihood that you'll be understood

                      • anthk 5 days ago

                        XFT it's the tecnology from X11 which allows antialiased fonts among FreeType. Add that support and you'll magically have proper fonts (and full Unicode ones) instead of the old, aliased, locale bound ones.

                        • skissane 5 days ago

                          You confuse people when you write it as XFT, when the correct capitalisation is Xft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xft

                          Also, you said:

                          > Add XFT support and this language would be cool to have a fast RAD development with easy crosscompilation.

                          Xft only works on X11, whereas "easy crosscompilation" suggests an interest in supporting multiple platforms, which normally includes platforms that don't use X11 (macOS, iOS, Android, Windows, even Linux with Wayland)