tkscript

tkscript is a JIT-accelerated C-like scripting language with bindings for OpenGL, SDL, SDL_net, libpng, and zlib.

A plugin SDK can be used to dynamically extend the script engine with custom C functions and C++ classes.

It can be used to create portable, 3D, OpenGL-accelerated multimedia applications.

TKS, short for "toolkit script-language", is an open and portable glue language for native code libraries. The script engine focuses on C++ API backends but also allows for C and Assembler functions. The scripts look much like C/C++/JavaScript/PHP so it will not take someone too long to get familiar with the syntax. A CPU table based (i.e. rather portable) Just In Time (JIT) compiler can speed up script execution by up to 100 times.

TKS serves as a scriptable application host for custom C++ libraries (�plugins�). Bindings for OpenGL,SDL,SDL_net,libpng,zlib,MiniFMOD and MySQL are available while other extensions are currently being developed, e.g. for the FOX GUI toolkit.

A TKS application project can be compiled to a gzip compressed TKX archive which will contain all data necessary to run that application. This technique makes it possible to deploy applications without prior local installation (besides the TKS runtime) which suggests the use for network based systems, e.g. the world wide web or intranets. TKX archives, in contrary to regular executables, are hardware-independent and can thus be used across multiple platforms.

The current implementation of the scriptlanguage, its source codes as well as precompiled distributions are available under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

The interface for application-specific C/C++ extension libraries (YAC) is released under terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License which also allows for proprietary (i.e. closed source) extensions (plugins).

Note: The code snippets found in this documentation can be run as-is, just copy them to a test.tks file and run them with the "tks" CLI command.

Here are some key features of "tkscript":

- a C/C++/Java(Script) like, JIT accelerated scripting engine (and gzip'd VFS) (TKScript)

- available for and tested with JIT support on:
· Microsoft Windows 95,98,Me,2000,XP
· X86 (very probably 68K) Linux (Mandrake, SuSE and some custom setups..)
· CygWin
· AmigaOS 3.0 (68040+ixemul+g++)

- application host for "YAC" plugins
· uses Win32-API resp. Solaris/Linux libdl to dynamically load DLLs/SOs

- a self contained, binary level C++ component/reflectance model and plugin SDK ("YAC")

- bindings for the OpenGL (1.1) toolkit ("tkopengl")

- bindings for the SDL cross platform hardware abstraction layer ("tksdl")
· The plugin can be used to develop video games and similar "realtime" applications.
· an abstraction to the hardware and software APIs of the Linux,Win32,BeOS,MacOS,MacOS-X,QNX,AmigaOS operating systems..
· supports the OpenGL graphics interface
· supports keyboard/mouse/joystick input devices
· audio support
· uses the SDL, SDL_net, libpng and zlib toolkits.
· The SDL_net API provides TCP/UDP networking facilities.

- a XML/HTML like markup language and interface to the FOX toolkit ("FXML")
· easy to learn if you know HTML and JavaScript (: