[JW Lua] Embed a JSON interpreter (cjson? dkjson?)

[Robert Patterson]

The world of Lua scripts for Finale is much wider than the lua-scripts
repository in the finale-lua organization at github. They range from ad hoc
to proprietary, and I'm thinking built-in json support might be of value to
them. I am currently trying to see if I can contact someone at Exasol to
see why they decided to add cjson to their embedded Lua.

 I agree that there will be no effort to include mixins in RGP Lua.

A better example is the transposition library. I have frequently felt that
proper transposition should be built into the PDK Framework. It's on my
task list to consider.


On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 8:50 AM Aaron Sherber <aaron at sherber.com> wrote:

> I guess I would say that I don't see a good reason for changing the
> current setup.
>
> There's a larger question about where to draw the line between RGP Lua,
> user scripts, and the includes that are currently in the repo. For
> instance, there are more user scripts that use mixins than ones that use
> json, but I don't think we're considering including mixins in RGP Lua.
>
> If the json library is included with RGP Lua, then user scripts that use
> json will also have to decide whether to specify a minimum version of RGP
> Lua or include a fallback to lunajson (in which case I think there's no
> advantage to the embedded encoder, since lunajson would still need to be
> bundled with the script).
>
> Keep in mind also that my "Document Options as JSON" script has a
> particular need to emit formatted JSON in alphabetical order, which is why
> I rolled my own encoder. So from a personal perspective, an embedded json
> library would only have value to me if it included both of those bits of
> functionality.
>
> Aaron.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 9:27 AM Robert Patterson <
> robert at robertgpatterson.com> wrote:
>
>> I'd say the biggest practical advantage of embedding it is that it
>> removes friction from using it and facilitates platform independence. I'm
>> guessing that's why Exasol embedded it as well. It was the same motivation
>> as for Luasocket. Plus it is possible that speed matters more in a database
>> engine.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 7:54 AM Aaron Sherber <aaron at sherber.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I find speed comparisons not highly relevant in situations like this,
>>> because we're talking about at most a handful of operations at a time. For
>>> example, look at the speed comparisons at the bottom of the page here:
>>> http://lua-users.org/wiki/JsonModules  Speeds range from 0.5 sec to 122
>>> sec -- for 100000 iterations. That means even the slowest time was just
>>> over 1 millisec per iteration. Make it an order of magnitude or two slower,
>>> and a human being can't tell the difference.
>>>
>>> I'm not saying I'd be opposed to embedding a JSON encoder -- I'm just
>>> trying to understand what the practical advantages might be.
>>>
>>> I'm also curious: How do you see Finale interacting with web services?
>>>
>>> Aaron.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 11:26 PM Robert Patterson <
>>> robert at robertgpatterson.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> There are two main reasons for CJSON in particular. One leads to the
>>>> other:
>>>>
>>>> 1. CJSON is a pure C implementation, which means it is more than an
>>>> order of magnitude faster than dkjson
>>>> <https://kyne.com.au/~mark/software/lua-json-performance.html>.
>>>> 2. Once we are talking about a C implementation, the dependencies start
>>>> to magnify. I embedded Luasocket and Luaosutils for the same reason.
>>>> Embedding means there is no extra cruft outside your script, and the same
>>>> script is usable on either platform.
>>>>
>>>> I see JSON as potentially becoming more important to Finale Lua since I
>>>> have added https post to luaosutils. (It's already available in the
>>>> experimental version of RGP Lua I released, called internet.post.) If
>>>> we start integrating Finale with web services, which is a capability I have
>>>> in mind, JSON is likely to be a critical component of it.
>>>>
>>>> BTW: I desperately wanted to use Luasocket for http, but for https it
>>>> requires LuaSec, and LuaSec has exploding dependencies. By contrast,
>>>> Luaosutils is lightweight and uses os-level services on Mac and Win to
>>>> send/receive data.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 7:28 PM Aaron Sherber <aaron at sherber.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> What would be the advantages of embedding it with Lua as opposed to
>>>>> the current method of requiring it (from src/lunajson) when it's needed?
>>>>>
>>>>> Aaron.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Mar 22, 2023 at 8:05 PM Robert Patterson <
>>>>> robert at robertgpatterson.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I just discovered that the Exasol database engine has an embedded Lua
>>>>>> interpreter similar to ours. I found a series of blog posts about their
>>>>>> efforts to upgrade from Lua 5.1 to Lua 5.4 (written last November.)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Like us, they embed LuaSocket. Another thing they do is embed cjson.
>>>>>> Is that something we should think about doing for our embedded Lua? I
>>>>>> already know of three Finale Lua scripts that use a json formatter, and
>>>>>> there will probably be more.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Robert
>>>>>>
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