Posted on by JesterXL

Lamenting Jingo

So I’m sitting there watching Breeze, it’s Live by the way,
and it’s obviously solved it’s technical challenges with ease, a mad “hurray”!

We learn about Director MX 2004 and all it has new to offer, and even before it’s begun,
your having the urge to fill Macromedia’s coffer.

Scarfing on pizza, downing mad soda,
I see familiar names from fellow designers and codah’z.

Now, I dig the DVD (ROM), I dig the external editing, the sprite & channel naming,
and the Stage that can dock while authoring.

But I think most what I dig, regardless of the slow bytecode, is the JavaScript Jingo,
implemented via open-source ECMA from Lingo.

I hope Java guys dig it, open source hounds try it out,
and a few Flashers do a round about… face.

7 Replies to “Lamenting Jingo”

  2. J-
    your post reads like bad beat poetry. Bring on the berets and bongos! :)

    Whaddya think of the new functionality? I wanted to catch the broadcast but think I was probably the only one in my area. Dammit. I wanna know more how the new scripting is implemented. Can you switch between verbose, dot syntax and it? Is verbose lingo now gone? etc. etc. etc.

  4. I liked it, personally… I’ve always liked Director, every version. I wasn’t TOO impressed with the DVD stuff, although, putting Flash interfaces sounded neat, you can do the same with thing with Squeeze + Flash…

    However, I admit, Jingo was pretty phat. There is a dropdown on your script window, near the whole global variable combo box that tells Director what type your script is: Lingo or JavaScript. Each script can be either Lingo or JavaScript; so your movie script could be JavaScript, and a behavior could be Lingo. Pretty phat to have a movie that has both. However, I think they said that the JavaScript compiles to slower bytecode… but who cares; I mean, people like me would make up the time in time gained in coding.

    Verbose Lingo will never die… go to the frame, fo-eva’!!!!!

    I dug the naming of sprites and sprite channels, although, I never got to see via some fellow AtlMMUG members, so sample code. I mean, sprite(1), and sprite channel 1 are the same thing… so how do you tell the difference between the sprite and the sprite channel when writing:

    sprite(“dude”).locH = 50

    ???

    Either way, she’s still alive and kickin’.

  6. I think the addition of the JS engine is the best thing that has happened to Lingo. Without this, the developer base and the product would probably have dwindled away, despite the production power of the tool. Their direction is good, but it is still missing the notion of classes. It is a great first step, I just hope they keep moving it more into the realm of traditional/standard programming as they have flash.

  7. True; it’s a start, and that is a wonderful precedent(sp?) for Director (at least, in the last little while beside 3D); a fresh and lively start. To me, Director has always had something like that in each new version, and da Jingo is one of the best.

    …classes? What’s wrong with c = new script(“dude”)

    and ancestor = new script(“superclass”)?

    …or is my syntax off…been awhile as always.

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