[JW Lua] RGP Lua Announcement

Thu Nov 25 23:34:07 CET 2021

RGPLua works right out of the box as advertised and the debugger is fast and accurate. Impressive! Two early responses.

1. EDIT SCRIPTS IN PLACE
With JWLua you can modify installed scripts on an external editor and JW executes the newly saved file immediately. Very convenient. RGP seems to load scripts on startup and won’t accept a modified file until Finale reboots.

2. TAB KEY IN DIALOGS
With FCCustomWindow() dialogs in JWLua the tab key gives rapid cycling between editable text fields. That behaviour would be great on RGP!

Carl

> On 25 Nov 2021, at 4:19 am, jwlua-request at jwmusic.nu wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. RGP Lua Announcement (Robert Patterson)
>   2. Re: RGP Lua Announcement (Thomas Weber)
>   3. Re: RGP Lua Announcement (Robert Patterson)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2021 10:17:11 -0600
> From: Robert Patterson <robert at robertgpatterson.com>
> To: "The JW Lua script plug-in." <jwlua at jwmusic.nu>
> Subject: [JW Lua] RGP Lua Announcement
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAACnceuBcAZABWBtSk7rX2nBGuwFo3TdWqvp8wxV5zBbKp0uBw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> This message is to announce the initial release of a new Finale-embedded
> Lua interpreter called RGP Lua. The reason for this project is that the
> much-appreciated JW Lua has an uncertain future. It has not been updated
> since 2017. It is gradually becoming incompatible with new releases of
> Finale, and it will stop working entirely under a likely imminent release
> of Finale for Apple Silicon.
> 
> Nearly all existing scripts should work identically as in JW Lua. There are
> a few incompatibilities, however. Most notable is that I haven't
> implemented finenv.UserValueInput. (You can use FCCustomWindow instead.
> It's slightly more cumbersome to use but looks far better.) Also, the setup
> and development environments are completely different, though simple to
> use. Downloads and documentation are here:
> 
> https://robertgpatterson.com/-fininfo/-rgplua/rgplua.html
> 
> JW Lua has also had some long-standing limitations that we all would like
> to see addressed. I am interested in feedback as to what is most important
> to the community. Here are some ideas of mine:
> 
> Support for modeless dialogs. This will be easy to implement within my
> code, so I'll probably do it soon. But it will require some changes to how
> scripts interact with RGP Lua, so I'll cover it in a separate post if there
> is interest.
> 
> Moving past Lua 5.2 to...what? To LuaJIT? (LuaJIT is based on Lua 5.1 and
> appears to be abandoned.) To Lua 5.4? (Lua 5.3 and higher introduce
> breaking changes in how Lua number to integer conversion happens which has
> potentially a huge impact on existing JW Lua scripts.) Maybe just stay put?
> 
> Direct support for the new doc-settings classes in F26.2 and higher.
> 
> Addition of missing classes. I'm betting FCTieMods is high on a number of
> lists. But anything I add will need testing beyond what I can do by myself.
> In the case of FCTieMods, I worry that there was some reason Jari never
> implemented it, though I don't see it if there is.
> 
> Two big enhancements already in RGP Lua are 1) support for Lua
> 5.2-compatible C libraries and 2) the option to embed luasocket for
> external debugging or other purposes.
> 
> Best,
> Robert
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2021 17:49:59 +0100
> From: Thomas Weber <thomas.weber at notengrafik.com>
> To: "The JW Lua script plug-in." <jwlua at jwmusic.nu>, Robert Patterson
> 	<robert at robertgpatterson.com>
> Subject: Re: [JW Lua] RGP Lua Announcement
> Message-ID: <2725eacb-27d3-edc9-24e1-43a2e56a5ba1 at notengrafik.com>
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> 
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> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2021 11:18:49 -0600
> From: Robert Patterson <robert at robertgpatterson.com>
> To: Thomas Weber <thomas.weber at notengrafik.com>
> Cc: "The JW Lua script plug-in." <jwlua at jwmusic.nu>
> Subject: Re: [JW Lua] RGP Lua Announcement
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAACncevBD5feWqfNybvd8cy4+oCyhFJ=8nrteZaitGy9kZWmOA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> RGP Lua has its own download page in the link. (And, yes, it's free.) Jari
> still deserves much of the thanks, because this project would not have been
> possible without him making the PDK Framework source code available. All I
> had to do was create a Lua wrapper for it, which was easier than you might
> think. (JW Lua has some undocumented reflection features that made it
> possible to automate a great deal of the wrapper code.)
> 
> On Wed, Nov 24, 2021 at 10:50 AM Thomas Weber <thomas.weber at notengrafik.com>
> wrote:
> 
>> Wow, that's incredible.  Now we have two embedded Luas for Finale!?  I
>> have far too much work for the rest of the year to try it, but given your
>> track record, I have no doubt that this is excellent software.  I just went
>> to your "purchase" page and was amazed that RGP Lua is not listed there.
>> It's really amazing that both Jari and you make your work on this available
>> for free.
>> 
>> 
>> Am 24.11.21 um 17:17 schrieb Robert Patterson:
>> 
>> This message is to announce the initial release of a new Finale-embedded
>> Lua interpreter called RGP Lua. The reason for this project is that the
>> much-appreciated JW Lua has an uncertain future. It has not been updated
>> since 2017. It is gradually becoming incompatible with new releases of
>> Finale, and it will stop working entirely under a likely imminent release
>> of Finale for Apple Silicon.
>> 
>> Nearly all existing scripts should work identically as in JW Lua. There
>> are a few incompatibilities, however. Most notable is that I haven't
>> implemented finenv.UserValueInput. (You can use FCCustomWindow instead.
>> It's slightly more cumbersome to use but looks far better.) Also, the setup
>> and development environments are completely different, though simple to
>> use. Downloads and documentation are here:
>> 
>> https://robertgpatterson.com/-fininfo/-rgplua/rgplua.html
>> 
>> JW Lua has also had some long-standing limitations that we all would like
>> to see addressed. I am interested in feedback as to what is most important
>> to the community. Here are some ideas of mine:
>> 
>> Support for modeless dialogs. This will be easy to implement within my
>> code, so I'll probably do it soon. But it will require some changes to how
>> scripts interact with RGP Lua, so I'll cover it in a separate post if there
>> is interest.
>> 
>> Moving past Lua 5.2 to...what? To LuaJIT? (LuaJIT is based on Lua 5.1 and
>> appears to be abandoned.) To Lua 5.4? (Lua 5.3 and higher introduce
>> breaking changes in how Lua number to integer conversion happens which has
>> potentially a huge impact on existing JW Lua scripts.) Maybe just stay put?
>> 
>> Direct support for the new doc-settings classes in F26.2 and higher.
>> 
>> Addition of missing classes. I'm betting FCTieMods is high on a number of
>> lists. But anything I add will need testing beyond what I can do by myself.
>> In the case of FCTieMods, I worry that there was some reason Jari never
>> implemented it, though I don't see it if there is.
>> 
>> Two big enhancements already in RGP Lua are 1) support for Lua
>> 5.2-compatible C libraries and 2) the option to embed luasocket for
>> external debugging or other purposes.
>> 
>> Best,
>> Robert
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> JWLua mailing listJWLua at jwmusic.nuhttp://jwmusic.nu/mailman/listinfo/jwlua_jwmusic.nu
>> 
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Notengrafik Berlin GmbH
>> HRB 150007
>> 
>> UstID: DE 289234097
>> Gesch?ftsf?hrer:
>> Thomas Weber und Werner J. Wolff
>> 
>> fon: +49 30 25359505
>> Friedrichstra?e 23a
>> 10969 Berlin
>> notengrafik.com
>> 
>> 
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