Minimal text editor inside the Lua REPL

vidak

i know this sounds like a complete pipe dream, but what about a text editor built around or top of of a VM? the idea would be to send messages or signals to the virtual machine to edit the text.

i am not sure what utility this would have, but it seems like an interesting thought nonetheless.

vidak

akkartik

much of what you can turn off or on for compilation in the arduino studio is defined here:

https://github.com/slviajero/tinybasic/blob/main/Basic2/IoTBasic/hardware.h

akkartik

Yeah, this pipe dream is very much what I’m interested in. I’m not opinionated about the language syntax, but Mu was trying to do this.

One challenge in coming up with a portable VM is the wide variety of I/O capabilities. Uxn has one approach to this challenge and it may well be the best.

vidak

akkartik I think we should explore this. If you’re interested in doing a VM text editor, we should do it!

I mocked up a simple one in BASIC, but I daresay with this project I am not necessarily interested in coding something more serious, like this, in BASIC.

akkartik

I seem unable to start something new at the moment. But if you start it I’ll contribute from time to time. Next couple of weeks are particularly good.

So maybe the first question is what Assembly you want to start with.

Or maybe trying to cross-compile Lua 5.1 for your processor of choice? I’m curious to see how large the binary would be..

But I won’t be surprised if we’re forced to go to Assembly for this.

vidak

Well, the virtual machine can be written in anything, really–I was thinking Common Lisp, perhaps.

Happy to learn Lua for the project, too.

vidak

vidak Mainly because this exploration I have been making into assembly on the Arduino is proving to be a very big headache…

akkartik

I just saw your https://social.solarpunk.au/objects/db48219d-4859-43c7-a229-a7fe964d685b. Sounds like the instruction set you care about is AVR?

And based on your recent comments here, it sounds like you’re thinking of just using an emulator atop a larger computer?

vidak

akkartik i think you’ve gotten a little confused, these two projects are separate.

with the arduino interest, i’m trying to write a Tiny BASIC for the arduino uno/micro/nanos with about 2K RAM.

with this potential text editor VM, i think something more high level is called for.

i think the two projects should be separate.

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