Hi:
I find monkey to be closer to raw C than anything else, but I haven't programmed much in Java. In 41 years of
programming Ive lost count of the number of languages Ive used, but Monkey is about as easy as it gets. Its autotyping
and ability to retype on the fly is powerful, though of course any language has its limits and Monkey definitely has limits,
the question is, what are they?
I do not in any way pretend to be an expert on Monkey script or really any scripting in particular, but as Ive modified
Monkey to suit Auggie, and added rudimentary preemptive abilities to it, Ive come to understand a lot of its internals.
Ive bound numerous functions to it, and in the next release many changes have been made and parallel threading is now
possible as well. This means as a line of Gcode, a parallel thread ( or several) may be started to run while the gcode
completes. This allows the scripter the power to monitor any condition and change the way the GCode or the hardware
itself reacts to incoming conditions.
Most controllers either have a function, or they don't, or you try to talk the developer,
( me, once upon a time) into adding it. The main thrust behind Auggie is to invent a system where the users are free to
add pretty much any function they wish, from THC type of functions perhaps to ms by ms variation of output signals during
runtime. I have no idea if a "roll your own" controller is actually possible, but all my tests to date seem to indicate it is,
or may be, now that computers are as good as they are. (Master5 , Mach3's original title, was 16 years ago).
So while I make myself a laser unit, Ill see just how versatile a program would have to be to allow a designer, perhaps with
assistance from this area, to make a machine to do "X", where "X" is something totally foreign to me. I will consider
this project a success when someone presents a user screen run machine that does something I totally did not anticipate.
Cake decorator perhaps.. oops, too late, I anticipate it..
We'll talk about that more as I get more libraries out and begin to show how to use the system. I suspect its really for the
brave and the stupid at this point, but I said that many times over the years and always had many other nuts join
me for the exercise. I guess all I can say at this point, is Im having more fun with Auggie than Ive had in awhile,
its a very interesting way to design a machine, totally backwards to Mach3, hope it all works out
Thanks Glen for the docs, I will include them in future versions of the installer as well, their a great start to using the scripter,
if anyone has questions on whats there, drop them here and we'll attempt to answer them. Ill be doing a final overview video
next on how scripting works in the system , how its attached and what the flow of operations is really like internally. It
may help people understand how the scripting will control things.
Art
