Sandcat Browser – Chromium and Lua
syhunt.com
syhunt.com
The comparison page uses Chrome 26 as its reference: http://www.syhunt.com/sandcat/index.php?n=Main.Comparison
Although similar in tech (both are prototypical languages), Lua seems more mature at the time. Not to mention it is also heavily used by game developers. Lua is also a better language without the pitfalls of JavaScript (ex. equality operators, etc).
It could have been used better as the language of the web.
A big what if.
I like Lua a lot, but javascript has a burden which Lua doesn't: backwards compatibility. Pages built 20 years ago must work on today's browsers. That is a huge commitment and is part of the reason javascript still has some of its bad parts. It can add new stuff, but deprecations are more difficult.
Lua has had the luxury of reinventing and refining itself on every version. Stuff has been deprecated. And that's how it has become so good and streamlined. I would not want it chained to browsers and subjected to their backwards compatibility jinx.
Having never heard of TlScript, I was curious why it would be worth using, because the blurb sounds a lot like ES6/7:
" () TIScript is the scripting engine used by Sandcat for some of its user interface operations. TIScript uses JavaScript as a base with some Python features added: classes and namespaces, properties, decorators, etc. See a JavaScript, Dart/Chrome and TIScript/Sciter comparison here "
The GitHub readme also says: Some work is still needed before a Mac or Linux version materializes.
From https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/33662/TIScript-language..., "The design of TIScript was based on the analysis of practical JavaScript use cases. In some areas, it simplifies and harmonizes JavaScript features. For example, the prototype mechanism was simplified. In other cases, it extends JavaScript, while preserving the original "look-and-feel" of JS."
The history at https://sciter.com/10-years-road-to-sciter describes the path from C++, Java, D, Ruby, Python, Lua and JavaScript to TIScript and W3C contributions by the author. Web site says that Sciter (licensed or OSS?) and TIScript run on 270 millions PCs and Macs, as a UI component in AV products. On the topic of garbage collection:
"... each part of UI framework shall use its own memory management and ownership principles that are optimal for the role they are playing. HTML DOM tree has very regular structure with clear one parent – many children ownership graph. Life cycle of DOM elements (read “UI elements”) is also quite deterministic. There is absolutely no need for GC if to speak about HTML/CSS. But code-behind-UI – code that does UI automation in “on-click-here-push-item-there-and-collapse-panel-over-there” fashion has to be manageable. GC there is the must – ownership graph is unknown upfront and frequently contains loops."