[Gambas-user] classic asp and vbscript compatibility

[Che]

One of the reasons I first became interested in Gambas was the idea of a
VBScript type scripting language for Linux / Apache (thanks but ChiliASP
is just a bit out of my price range) that would allow me to migrate away
from IIS without having to rely on PHP / MySQL (thanks but no
thanks...).

I have quite a bit of experience developing in ASP (OsoBlues et al
http://ob.indigoblues.ca) and would gladly contribute if it meant
getting some of the more used Classic ASP functions ported over to
Gambas.

Of course documentation might be helpful... >:^)

Mark

On Sun, 2008-02-10 at 21:30 +0100, Benoit Minisini wrote:
> On dimanche 10 février 2008, Laxminarayan AB wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > is there an attempt to make vbscript and jscript conversion or run directly
> > under gambas?
> 
> No, but something very similar is doable. The gb.web component have all the 
> methods equivalent to ASP. The only thing that is missing is a support for an 
> equivalent of the ASP pages.
> 
> >
> > What i know so far:
> > - compiled gambas 2 from source - works fine
> > - saw the excellent set of examples, but gambas web runs as CGI, afaik
> 
> A CGI script written in Gambas can beat all bloated ASP.NET applications. 
> Tested in reality :-) SO CGI is not really a problem. A support for FastCGI 
> would be better.
> 
> > - have a long familiarity with MS VB, VB.Net
> >
> > What i would like to see or do is gambas as an apache module or with a
> > native web server to host "ASP" applications. I know that writing a web
> > server is not an easy task.
> 
> You don't write a web server. You use Apache, or better, thttpd (or lighttpd). 
> For just running CGI scripts and serving static contents, thttpd is very 
> small and fast.
> 
> > I know that Gambas is not aiming to repeat the mistakes of VB. So, maybe
> > the VBScript API can be emulated by a wrapper over gb web, just to maintain
> > syntax compatiblity. Debugging and other things can be added while
> > improving the port. (Or does it need to be designed into new code?)
> 
> Real compatibility is a matter of translating the VBScript syntax into Gambas 
> syntax. I.e. it would be a sort of converter that would be run before the 
> compilation.
> 
> Debugging a CGI script is really not easy at the moment. To do that, I need to 
> embed a web server into gb.web (thttpd!) so that the Gambas CGI script is 
> independent.
> 
> Note you don't have to make a program for each page. Your web site should be a 
> unique CGI script, a unique Gambas project, will the rendering code of all 
> pages inside.
> 
> >
> > The need for ASP compatibility is that MS is trying to phase out ASP and
> > there is a ton of code in ASP. And many users of ASP. MS does not mind
> > ditching them or forcing them to learn ASP.Net.
> >
> > ASP.Net is very slow and bloated. Also, Mono is handling ASP.Net on Linux.
> >
> > The only other systems that run ASP 3.0 are the SUN Java System Active
> > Server Pages or the ActiveHTML component from selisoft.
> > The first one is Java, which needs  a J2EE server and the second is a
> > closed proprietary extension to ABYSS web server.
> > Halcyonsoft's  iASP seems to have gone off the web, untraceably!
> >
> 
> A VBScript->Gambas translator would be easy I think, more than a VB->Gambas 
> translator, as the syntax is less complex. Except for obscure ASP methods, 
> and for ActiveX components that are just there to prevent you from escaping 
> from Windows.
> 
> > I am not very skilled at systems programming, but i'm good at learning
> > things. Is this task easy or difficult? I'd be glad if someone gave a quick
> > overview od what would be required.
> > Also, if anyone is already working on this, there's no need to duplicate
> > effort. Other than that, whenever I get the time, I'm willing to help out
> > in any other way.
> 
> I think I was not very clear, but continue on asking questions if you are 
> motivated.
> 
> >
> > Regards,
> > Laxminarayan AB.
> >
> > PS: gambas IDE and the example set is awesome. Just if we could make the
> > IDE a bit more polished, 
> 
> Please give more details, as sometimes I don't have the idea to add some very 
> easy features. But if you want code folding, you have to wait, wait... :-)
> 
> > it would strike a chord with MS Windows RAD users. 
> >
> 
> Regards,
>