Features of Unicon

Already Have

• System interface (Unicon-1)
• OOP (Unicon preprocessor, descended from Idol)
• delete(L, i) and insert(L, i) from middle of list
• delete, insert, and member handle multiple elements
• key(L) generates the indexes of L
• string(x,y,z) produces x||y||z if they are all convertible
• mouse motion events
• window system clipboard I/O (but there's design change for it)
• Ability to read URL's just like local files.
• min() and max() builtins
• to-by generalized to work with real # strides (Tenaglia)
• Get rid of $ syntax in Idol, use object.method() instead

Must-haves (in book, not finished yet)

• A portable subset of Unicon. Can we raise the language level of any of the Unicon facilities? (Li Lin, Dec. 11 delivery on Windows port)
• UNIX version of Wi (S. Bird; Dec. 11 delivery?)
• Database interface (ODBC, DBM), persistent tables. Nick Kline has made some suggestions of issues that will affect the design. Serious work on this to begin Dec. 14 or so.
• Type conversion and defaulting syntax. Waiting on this until I get Ray's lex and yacc for Icon and wire up Idol to use them.
• autolinking for stdicon libraries
• changes to system()
• changes to select() & reads()

Seriously Wants

• Variable initializers (doable at least for locals and statics). Should be simple addition to Idol.
• Idol support in type(), image(), size, random, subscript and bang
• Idol support for o.superclass.method(x), and o.m ! L
• Elementwise Structure-at-a-time operations on lists and tables; L1 + L2
• Packages
• Bit vectors. Not for book, later.
• Icon debugger. Not for book, later.

Wishes

• List sections as l-values (Anders Holzberg, Steve Wampler)
• past(s), produce positions following string s, == find(s)+*s (MJEvans)
• Assertions (Kostas Oikonomou)
• object(x), a function to test if something is an object
• round(f), ceiling(f), and floor(f)
• Ability to write URL's just like local files. :-)
• Named arguments a la Ada (parameters in any order)
• Class variables
• type(object) should return the class name, not the mangled classname__...
• Implicit string concatenation
• Macro $define's should allow arguments, a la cpp.
• table literals: initialized Table constructor t := table(0, key, val, key2, val2) or custom syntax, e.g. t := [ "foo":3, "bar":5] or ?
• Idol needs to be able to autogenerate HTML class catalogs
• open() and open(,"w") for a file selector dialog (Paul Abrahams)
• Two-way pipes (do we have this already?)
• OS-independent file naming
• Overloading built-in operators to handle new types (Bob Alexander). I will go so far as to say: sufficient if this is for classes only, and invokes named methods on those classes.
• delete(T,x,mode) modes: 1:x===key, 2:all x such that x===value
• stdlib, a ucode file that is autolinked in by icont
• !i short for 1 to i
• Pervasive convertibility to/from structure types, as for strings, and integers. Lists and records can trivially convert to tables.
• Argument currying/culling/partial invocation
• p!r record invocation a la list invocation
• x <<< y and x >>> y for sort-compatible comparison of arbitrary values
• s[x] a set membership test, succeeds and produces x if x is in set s
• member(cs, s) should test if all elements of s are in cs
• set equivalence, subset, and superset functions or operators
• "Irregular expressions", or perhaps a simple built-in regexp(1) interface
  • =cs for tab(many(cs)), a la =s
  • ~=s for tab(find(s)), a la =s
  • ~=cs for tab(upto(cs)), a la =s
  • move() defaults to 1
  • tab() defaults to 0
  • s1[s2] equivalent to s1[find(s2,s1) +: *s2]
  • s^^n equivalent to repl(s,n)
  • s[c] equivalent to upto(c,s)
• .:= field access augmented assignment
• In/Out/InOut or VAR parameters
• Exceptions
• OpenGL API
• A "with" statement for records
• A xor B
• CopyArea() should allow multiple areas to be copied in one call

Implementation stuff

• Fix field table compression
• Event monitoring #ifdef's on a per-event-type basis
• Event monitoring support for trapped variable assignment/dereference
• Icont should generate code for unrecognized fieldnames. r.foo = r["foo"] if foo is unrecognized
• add serial numbers to regions, so you can say "collecting string region 3"
• VM instruction tuning
• add a "checksum" for rapid cset equality?
• better support for tiny tables

Proposed for Removal

• entab/detab - demote to IPL
• save - remove as unsupported on most platforms; probably could be demoted to IPL as a loadfunc if any platform still supports it.

Considered and Rejected

• open() and open(,"w") for a file selector dialog. Instead, the user can use an appropriate IPL dialog or Windows native function.