Kite Programming Language

TextMate bundle for Kite

Written by Mooneer Salem on Monday 26th of January, 2009 in General

Note: Updated TextMate bundle available here.

Michael J. Edgar, Dartmouth College Class of 2010, has written a TextMate bundle for Kite. This adds syntax highlighting for Kite language files.

Thanks, Michael! (Speaking of which, syntax highlighting for vim would be awesome, too--I should add that to the wishlist.)

Kite wishlist

Written by Mooneer Salem on Thursday 1st of January, 2009 in General

Now that 1.0.0's out, I feel it's time to reflect on the future of Kite.

At this point, the interpreter is stable. All unit tests pass, and what should pass as valid syntax does. Stuff runs, including an IRC bot written in Kite hanging out in #kite on Freenode (thanks, Rowan/thewolf!) However, there are definitely some add-on modules that would be nice to have:

  • A database connection layer: This would be a layer, similar to Perl's DBI, that allows a Kite application access to a SQL database. There's already a layer for C apps called libdbi, and a layer for Kite could simply be a loadable module with libdbi linked in.
  • XML/DOM parser: With the advent of RSS and other technologies that use XML, this would be nice to have. It should be possible to write this module 100% in Kite, or for performance, use libxml or similar.
  • Module installer system: Something like Perl's CPAN or rubygems to install Kite modules automatically. Maybe something that avoids the pitfalls of the systems already out there. This may also include some sort of module that acts similar to autoconf for Kite modules.
  • FastCGI/Apache modules: Embed Kite into Apache, like mod_perl and mod_php. There is support for regular CGI, but an embedded interpreter would be best.
  • POP3/IMAP/SMTP/FTP/HTTPS/SSL modules: Include support in the interface namespace for protocols other than HTTP.
  • Multiple inheritance: This is not kosher OO normally, but there are uses for such a feature. There should be a way to code it as a dynamic module without needing to change language syntax.

What else would you like to see in Kite? Discuss it on the Kite mailing list. You can also download the latest version or look at the Subversion tree, if you'd like to play around. (This documentation may also help, if you'd like to extend Kite.)

1.0.0 released

Written by Mooneer Salem on Thursday 1st of January, 2009 in Releases

Happy New Year! We've just released Kite 1.0.0, our first release out of beta.

New in this release:

  • Fixed libgc linkage problems in OSX. (ticket #71)
  • 85% reduction in minimum memory use per object.
  • Can now specify ranges as part of native Kite syntax (using from:to[:step] notation).
  • microregex: fixed capturing parenthesis issues.
  • microregex: fixed character class parsing issue.
  • microregex: added most of the remaining escapes from Perl regular expressions.
  • Added whitespace trimming methods to System.string.
  • "version" keyword added to Kite syntax to support module versioning (to prevent module from being used in incompatible Kite versions). (ticket #76)
  • Default equality and non-equality operator behavior is now to compare addresses. (ticket #77)
  • Fixed Kite syntax to allow constructs such as x[0].prop.
  • Most compile warnings removed in Windows.
  • Kite API documented and tutorial for module builders added to documentation.

Download:

Issue tracker URL (for bug reports): http://trac.kite-language.org/report/1
Getting help: http://trac.kite-language.org/wiki/GettingHelp

microregex 1.0b7 released

Written by Mooneer Salem on Sunday 28th of December, 2008 in Releases

We've just released version 1.0b7 of the microregex regular expression engine!

New in this release:

  • Now supports \c, \l, \u, \L, \U, \E, \Q, \B, \A, \Z and \z escapes.
  • Memory allocation modified so that less memory is used during matching.

Download:

Issue tracker URL (for bug reports): http://trac.kite-language.org/report/1
Getting help: http://trac.kite-language.org/wiki/GettingHelp

New: kite-discuss mailing list

Written by Mooneer Salem on Saturday 20th of December, 2008 in General

We now have a new mailing list for Kite language communications! Use this list if you want help or have any questions regarding the language.

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