Re: [ELPA] New package: kixtart-mode

[Morgan Willcock <morgan@ice9.digital>]

Óscar Fuentes <ofv@wanadoo.es> writes:

> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>> >> BUT, it is a bad thing if people use SickStart to write scripts
>>> >> that they could have written in a free scripting language.
>>> >
>>> > There are no scripting languages for MS-Windows that are Free
>>> > Software, AFAIK.

To clarify on exactly what type of scripting language this is: KiXtart
is not a general purpose scripting language it was specifically designed
to be used as a Windows logon script processor.

It would not make sense to port it to a non-Windows platform because the
majority of functionality is derived from wrapping Win32 API calls.

A free software alternative can exist but primarily it would have to
operate by making Win32 API calls.

>>> After a cursory look at kixtart, I would say with confidence that Tcl/Tk
>>> with the twapi package provides a superset of its features.
>>
>> Does Tcl/Tk provide access to the low-level Windows APIs, like
>> Registry and Win32 functions?
>
> Registry access is provided by Tcl out of the box. Access to Windows
> APIs is provided by the twapi package.
>
> https://twapi.magicsplat.com/

An equivalent in functionality would a self-contained Tcl kit which
includes the TWAPI library, but this is less appealing for three reasons
(and bear in mind that I like Tcl):

- When I looked into building a Tcl kit from source there was no
  documented or standard method to build one, what is recommended is to
  download a pre-built binary and trust it

- The self-contained Tcl kit would be significantly larger than the
  KiXtart binary, this will get copied across the network whenever a
  user logs in

- When I tried querying and mapping printers with TWAPI it didn't seem
  to work correctly

I'm sure it can be argued that any scripting language with an FFI
interface is suitable, but in practical terms the only options which
don't require crafting your own portable interpreter are VBScript,
JScript, and PowerShell - these are already available locally.

P.S. If anyone was still interested to look at the package it has now
moved to sourcehut: https://git.sr.ht/~mew/kixtart-mode

Thanks,
Morgan