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The Internet

New Language CURL Merges HTML And Javascript 299

Posted by timothy from the like-a-hole-in-the-head dept.
jluxe writes: "CNN reports that a new language, Curl, was presented at the Software Development Forum in Palo Alto. This language works via a plug-in to browsers, and attempts to merge the gap between HTML, javascript, java, and even C++. It also supports the Macromedia Flash plug-in. Interesting to note that Tim Berners-Lee is listed as a financial backer of this venture, as well as an adviser." Here's the Curl Corporation's official website as well.
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New Language CURL Merges HTML And Javascript More

New Language CURL Merges HTML And Javascript

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  • I dunno, I've seen browsers grow exponentially in bloat and instability trying to support all the client-side technologies (Java, JavaScript, DHTML, Flash, ActiveX..) over the years. And in the end, web pages that do most stuff server-side and just pass along HTML with a little bit of javascript mouseovers usually provide the most pleasant end-user experience.

    Do we really need more client-side bloat? By pushing the task of compiling code onto the client, you take a task that can be done quickly, efficiently, and seamlessly by the server and move it to a thousand clients, all of which are likely to screw up, and none of which can boast the computational power of the server.

    I just smell another new buzzword to make me upgrade my browser, make web pages not work right, make my browser eat more RAM, and make whatever company invented the technology money as the browsers scramble to license the technology.
  • Interesting that they don't trust their own plug-in to generate documentation pages, and instead rely on the lame PDF standby. We hates PDF files.

    What the fsck is wrong with HTML for documentation?

  • Okay, so let me get this straight. This language includes all that shite I try to avoid - pop-ups, "rich" "media", slow-loading applets, sound, viruses, and everything else in one package? All the benefits of Flash, Java, and [various]Script all in the "new language for the web"?!

    You've got to be smoking something particularly potent to think this is GOOD news.

  • > It also supports the Macromedia Flash plug-in.

    OK, so someone made a language that will make your browser do all the things you ever didn't want it to do. $SUBJECT
  • http://www.curl.com/html/products/surge_license.js p [curl.com]:
    • You are advised and acknowledge that the plug-in may transmit information regarding your use of content to Curl. ... and/or to provide statistics or other aggregate information on content use. ... You expressly authorize the collection and transmission of information by the plug-in, and expressly authorize Curl to access and utilize the information collected and transmitted by the plug-in.
    Youch.

  • Middleware (Score:2, Informative)

    by Godeke ( 32895 )
    From the website's linked news release.
    "Curl Corp is aware of that [middleware] need and plans to eventually add features, such as database connectivity ." (Emphasis mine).

    Nuff said - this isn't anywhere near mature enough to be more than a toy.

    http://www.eaijournal.com/PDF/Curl.pdf (August 2001)
    • Well, why a client-side web-language should need to offer database-connectivity in order to seem mature is beyond me. Would you use database-connectivity in javascript, if it had any? These things should be done on the server side, and you know it.

      Whether or not it's mature? Well, I don't know about stability (probably not much worse than most other shit available on the web), but the features it offers seems to be just the right thing.

      The web today does still consist of static pages. I do not consider applets or animated gifs an exception to this rule, because their interaction with their environment is close to nada. And javascript plainly suck, we all know it is good for nothing. Have you ever tried to write tick-tack-toe in javascript to be displayed in a browser window?

      Curl does the right thing, it is a simple to use, easy to program, presentation language for the web. All those standards from W3C may be fine and dandy, but they still have some problems when it comes to the real world:

      1. They are for describing content, not presentation.
      2. They have lot's of historical baggage.
      3. There are too many of them, and it's starting to get really complicated.
      4. None of them has implementations that are even remotely capable of doing what Curl do.

      I'd say curl is a great idea, and probably something it would be worthwile for the free software community to look into. But this fucking corporate licensing "give your first unborn son to us" stuff, makes anyone interested go away. Considering that curl originally started with a DARPA-grant, it's really sad to see it going down for no reason except corporate greediness.

  • Complement - perhaps, replacement - nope. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by viktor ( 11866 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @05:24AM (#2119917) Homepage
    Curl aims to replace HTML, JavaScript, C++ and more. I see two immediate reasons this will not happen, regardless of how good it may be technically.

    The first is that Curl is not free (don't stop reading, I'm not a zealot). If you are a commercial entity wishing to publish Curl content, you have to pay Curl Corp. a licensing fee. Writing a free Curl enginge is likely to be irrelevant, as you pay Curl Corp. to use Curl content, not to use their software. HTML, JavaScript, C++, Java and many others are free. Write a compiler or interpreter, and anybody can use them.

    To gain widespread use on the web, a language should not require the publisher to pay where the current languages don't. Unless it's incredibly much better than anything available today. It must surely have some real killer features if companies are to be interested in converting their sites to Curl. The larger the company, the less likely they are to convert (Curl licensing is by volume), and the more likely they are to influence what the smaller companies do.

    The second reason, and it's a smaller but still relevant question, is cross platform portability. Curl's homepage lists the system requirements as Windows 95/98/NT, Netscape or IE, with Linux and Mac "coming soon". But there are an incredible amount of browsers out there already for platforms that are not on the desktop.

    One of the things that made the web great is that it is not dependant on a particular manufacturer to implement their product on a particular platform. Anybody can write a HTML- and JavaScript-browser if they have the time and skills. Opera wouldn't have seen the light of day had Curl been the standard.

    Then there's the question of e.g. proxies. There are lots and lots of products in use today that work on HTML, e.g. cacheing and filtering proxies, that will not work with Curl. Whether Curl publishes standards so that proxy/filter manufacturers can implement Curl support remains to be seen. As does whether a proxy counts as a publisher and should thus pay royalties to Curl Corp.

    I don't see Curl as a serious replacement for HTML/Java/JavaScript/C++ anytime soon. Perhaps under a modified licensing agreement, with published standards, big corporations would consider a switch and smaller would follow. But for today I don't think Curl stands a chance, regardless of technical merits.

  • Last time Tim got suckered into lending his name to one of these enterprises the result was Akamai. Tim sold all his shares right after the lock out to avoid 'conflicts of interest'. Good move AKAM cratered afterwards.

    The business model for Curl is laughable. It is based on an MIT conceit that the programming language is all important. When I looked at the Curl stuff a few years back it looked like yet another attempt to make C look like Lisp. Yeah whatever but Lisp does quite a good job of looking like Lisp.

    If you have to download a plug in to use the language you might as well write the code in C# and be done with it. The guys who wrote C# are at least as smart as the guys in 545 Tech square.

    Ward did not strike me as being the live wire of the lab, nor for that matter did his students. Dertousos is just the Director, like Negroponte he does not do, he presents, unlike Negroponte however I doubt that many grad students would go to talk to Detousos for inspiration.

    Bottom line is I did not see people queueing up to learn Curl inside Tech square so I don't see why anyone outside the building is likely to use it.

  • I was just noticing that it broke the functionality of my mouse wheel when I ran their demo, then to my surpise IE shuts down and TextPad pops up with the following message:

    *** Fatal Curl Error! ***

    Assertion failed in c:/cygwin/scratch-auto/automated-build-temp/curl/C ore/MemoryManager/refill.c:38: !a->being_collected
    ******* Aborting! *******

    Strange behavior.

  • Screw dat, I've got my own bitchin language ... (Score:3, Funny)

    by nicodaemos ( 454358 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @02:28AM (#2122091) Homepage Journal

    In a separate note, Nicodaemos announced today that he is releasing his new language, Hurl, at the masses. "Many people in the industry are very excited about this new language." says Nico. "In fact, Steve Ballmer was heard to say that this is one language he just couldn't keep down."

    Nico states that "Though the software is free, Hurl makes money by metering and charging fees to businesses that 'Hurl' down their users throats." "It's very exciting technology.", says Nico, "Companies will be able to send their content as projectiles to a user's browser in chunks." "Other languages are very watered down. They're here and then they're gone. Hurl sticks to you and seeps into places within your organization you never thought possible. And it's persistent. Even though you don't see it, you'd swear you could smell it. Hurl leaves a lasting impression on you."

    This isn't all marketing hype. Hurl does seem to be gaining momentum with developers. One developer was recently heard to say, "... Passports, C#, .NET ... Jeez it all just makes me want to Hurl!"

    The prediction business is very tricky and although I'm not a psychic, I'm predicting that the upcoming release of Windows XP looks like it will drive many to Hurl, in a big way.

  • In case you didn't know (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Faux_Pseudo ( 141152 ) <Faux.Pseudo@gmail.cFREEBSDom minus bsd> on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:43AM (#2122871)
    I had no idea who Tim Burns-Lee was.
    I found him here.
    http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/
  • Flash per se doesn't compete with tools put out by Microsoft - Curl does - so I doubt you'll ever see Curl as a default plugin distributed with Windows/IE...not while C# and ASP are being pushed as web development tools by MS. Goodbye Curl.

  • What about PHP? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pjbass ( 144318 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:37AM (#2125546) Homepage
    It's interesting. People have seen the short-comings of Java, with the client-side operating environment practically bringing your machine to its knees, not to mention certain IE vulnerabilities with older versions of JDK. So we tried to move away from that environment by performing server-side processing. ASP, JSP, ColdFusion, and the ever-powerful PHP. Why is it that we want to go away from the server-side arena when we know what it is like?

    Now the reason I'm directly mentioning PHP is because this plugin boasts the ability to merge C++ with your webpages. Well, you can write CGI with C++, but that is usually rather painful. PHP is (to me) Perl and C/C++ all wrapped into one. You want classes? Sure, you got them. You want great string manipulation? Sure, that's there too. Not to mention you can embed Javascript in their if you NEED to use it. And now that PHP supports some level of GTK for graphics, why would you even want to use Java, especially since you can ram all the Shockwave and Macromedia Flash into a PHP-generated page that you want? I just don't see the benefit, if there is any, of trying this, when server-side dynamic pages have proven to be incredible, and give all and even more functionality that this product boasts. Who knows though, maybe it will be better than we all expect.

    • Re:What about PHP? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by smallpaul ( 65919 ) <paul @ p r e s c o d . net> on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @02:56AM (#2116350)
      Your post indicates that you have a pretty limited view of the programming language space. PHP is "Perl and C/C++ wrapped into one" because it has "classes", "great string manipulation", "support for CGI" and "now GTK" These are all supported by Python, Perl, Ruby and a host of other languages. PHP is just one among many. PHP's real virtue is that it is totally embedded in the web server environment. It is hard to justify it purely in terms of language features as you seem to want to. It is a mediocre language embedded in a great dynamic web pages environment.

      And anyhow, the existence of these many server side languages do not really have any impact on the need for languages on the client side. Yes, PHP can generate JavaScript, HTML, Flash and other stuff that works on the client-side. But really Curl is competing with those client-side languages, not with PHP. PHP could just as easily generate Curl if it turned out to be better than JavaScript et. al. So PHP is great at what it does but not really relevant to the question of Curl's utility or viability.
      • > [PHP] is a mediocre language embedded in a great dynamic web pages environment.

        Don't have to tell me twice. Passes all objects by value, making them immutable, unless you use by-reference semantics, which you now have to do in function declarations (call-time byref semantics have been deprecated if not outright removed now). Uses the === operator, worst syntax ever, lifted from ecmascript, guess they expected people to think 'eq' had perl's broken implementation. === didn't even work on objects until I complained to the designers that I wanted an identity compare -- I had to explain the very concept of object identity to them and advocate its relevance. Then it was implemented to have the exact same semantics as the member-for-member compare of ==, but even slower. There's still no identity compare, so I still couldn't do something as simple as a search for a node in a tree without having to use some kind of unique id field in every object in the system -- which is exactly what they suggested I do. This didn't help the fact that my system was working on copies until I discovered PHP's pass-by-value semantics when I wondered why none of my objects were getting updated by my transform algorithms.

        Not sure if inheritance is working yet.

        PHP has no concept of namespaces, and dumps hundreds of functions with hundreds more to come in a global namespace, and you cannot wrap these functions (I eventually wrote a hack to do so, it's lost and was tricky to implement the first time, so don't bother asking). You can't selectively load these extensions, you must recompile the whole language. (I understand you can now disable individual functions in a config file, my primary concern. My hack allows you to disable and wrap builtin functions in the language itself)

        PHP took what was looking to be a better OO language than perl and managed to rip out anything meaningful about OOP. When I aired these problems, I was told by the designers that a) PHP is not an object-oriented language, and b) it was not and never will be designed for the uses I was putting it through. And I was designing an ASP-like application framework with it, something that should have been in the domain of a "web language".

        Then I discovered FastCGI and Template Toolkit for perl, which had everything I wanted, and I never looked back.

    • Re:What about PHP? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tim C ( 15259 )
      People have seen the short-comings of Java, with the client-side operating environment practically bringing your machine to its knees

      I'm sorry, but that's complete bull. I'm typing this in galeon 0.11 on a P3 450 with 256MB of RAM, with JBuilder 4 Pro (a pure Java IDE) running on another desktop, KDE2.1, KMail running, etc, and the machine is running just fine, thank you very much.

      Java has come a long way in the last couple of years. True, most popular browsers still use an outdated version (1.1?), but don't let that blind you to what a real JDK can do.

      I work for a web agency, and we do all our server-side work in Java (on Linux). No, I wouldn't recommend using Java client-side for a web site, but that's just because of most browsers' crappy Java support.

      Personally, I'll be watching CURL with interest. I don't think it'll take off anytime soon, if at all (12meg download for a plugin? Not over a modem...), and I can't see us using it, but at least someone is trying something new.

      Cheers,

      Tim

      • CURL is heavily influenced by Lisp, a language popular among Computer Scientists. A relatively simple dialect of Lisp, Scheme [schemers.org], is used in teaching introductory CS. Improvements from Perl 4 to Perl 5 were inspired by Scheme, as were some current and future Python features. Scheme's syntax is quite different from C, etc., albeit simpler and more uniform.

        Kawa Scheme [gnu.org] compiles directly to JVM bytecodes, without any intermediate Java-language code. It's quite useful for scripting in a Java environment. I've extended it into the Beautiful Report Language (BRL) [sourceforge.net], a template system like PHP but without the language misfeatures. If you want to get a feel for a Lisp-like language while working in a server-side Java environment, BRL would be a good tool.

        In case you missed it, yes, this is a shameless plug. I wrote BRL and use it daily in a professional environment.

  • I wonder if the choice of their name matters to the Daniel Stenberg and company, the folks developing the open-source curl and libcurl software. It's a utility similar to wget.

    http://freshmeat.net/projects/curl/ [freshmeat.net]
    http://freshmeat.net/redir/curl/1612/url_homepage/ [freshmeat.net]

    Anyway, this other new curl plugin brings to mind those several kernels of popcorn in the bottom of the bag that will never pop. The internet has many such kernels.

  • cUrl already exists (Score:2, Interesting)

    by billcopc ( 196330 )
    What will the fine folks who made cUrl ("the client that groks the urls") say of this ?

    If I had a chance to sue some vaporware e-bullshit company out of existence, I'd sure jump on the occasion :)
    • So here's my question: How long before you get sued by curl.com? ;)

      "Well, we're a commerical venture and we've gone about registering this trademark, your honor..."

    • Re:cUrl already exists (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bagder ( 32513 )
      [deja vu, this was also dealt with the last time this was around]

      What will the fine folks who made cUrl ("the client that groks the urls") say of this ?

      We say we've named our project curl since 1998, but we weren't the first 'curl' even then so you won't see us complain or rant about curl.com walking in with the big boots on.

      If I had a chance to sue some vaporware e-bullshit company out of existence, I'd sure jump on the occasion :)

      You won't see that happen from the main cURL crew. We have really nothing to gain nor do we have a good case. We won't whine, we'll continue to improve.

      curl and libcurl [curl.haxx.se], transfers those URLs from command line and now feature APIs for at least nine programming languages.

      I am the lead developer and maintainer of curl. More than 60 people are remembered for non-trivial changes. This is truly free software/open source (yes, both!)

  • User represents, warrants and covenants that (a) User is 18 years old or older;
    So high schoolers can't use their web site? That's rich.
  • If I'm a business corporation looking to improve something like my company Intranet using a tool like this, I'd be thinking it's pretty cool until I hit this line:
    "...We charge commercial customers based on the volume of Curl content executed..."

    I think the cost aware boss has no reason not to stick with either Perl or PHP, both of which can bring incredible functionality to the web without having expense or browser or platform worries dragging in tow.
  • I'm virginal re: curl but these are my notes. Useful?

    Curl tech competes w/javascript, but "In addition, the Surge plug-in offers an integrated XML parser to allow direct interpretation of data streams encoded in most universal data exchange formats" and the built-in ability to do multimedia, animation. -- http://www.curl.com/html/products/surge.jsp [curl.com].

    "The Surge plug-in is currently for Microsoft® Windows® only - Macintosh® and Linux coming soon! The Surge plug-in installer is 360kB in size, and will download files from Curl.com as needed. Total installation will depend on system configuration. " -- Ibid. The security is tiered, and sandbox-safe by default, but can allow access to the local system, unlike javascript. --Ibid.

    i'm interested partly because prog'ing for Javascript is an unhappy experience, partly because the results are so browser-dependent. A plug-in from a single company should make for better consistency. 8/7/01

    Curl is the language, Surge is the name of the plug-in (v1.1) and The Surge Lab is the IDE (beta 5). 8/7/01

    "The Curl language integrates mark-up functionality, scripting functionality, and a full-featured object-oriented programming language,all within one environment. Curl technology can be used with existing Webtechnologies, such as HTML, CGI and JavaScript, and multimedia animation tools, or it can be used in place of them." ... "No more waiting for round trips to the server. Text, graphics, scripting, and object-oriented programming are contained in a consistent and unified environment." ..."And it improves the developer experience by making the creation of this superior content both easier and more efficient" -- http://www.curl.com/html/technology/technology.jsp [curl.com] 8/7/01

    "The Curl" content language allows you to create the following items: "Curl Applets, which end users can view in an Internet browser. "Applications, which run outside of an Internet browser. Applications have a stand-alone, windows-based user interface. " Curl Packages, which are logical collections of source code written in the Curl language. " Scripts, which contain code that runs from the command line of the operating system.However, with this release of the Curl language, you can create only applets and packages. Support for creating applications and scripts will appear in a future release." --- p04-curl-basic-features.pdf. 6/01

    "A pre-processed .curl file has the extension .pcurl. [As opposed to .curl files.]

    Pre-processing files improves the load time of packages.
    Pre-processing files makes the delivered code much smaller.
    Pre-processing files hides the source code." ...
    "you can distribute only packages in .pcurl format; you cannot distribute applets in .pcurl format." -- Ibid.

    The language appears clean but nothing earth shaking. It's most advanced and unusual feature may be anonymous procs. "You can assign ananonymous procedure to a variable and then use that variable name to call the anonymous procedure." ...
    "Unlike other functions, which can be declared only in very specific places, you can declare an anonymous procedure in any code block or expression." Suchas a regular proc, a method, or top-level Curl source code. ...
    "One of the most powerful features of anonymous procedures is their ability to access variables that are defined within the scope of the block of codecontaining the anonymous procedure definition. (This feature is also referred to as supporting closures over lexical variables.)" -- Ibid, p191. I just skimmed, but anonymous procs look like a way to create a procedure data type, plus give it access to more var's.

    Curl.com claims that the download sizes are 1/10 of what they are normally, that must be true only for some .pcurl files. 8/7/01

    Everything is free and open source, except the use of curl.com, which is metered by the downloaded # of bytes. 8/7/01. "Non-commercial users can deploy Curl content at no charge." -- http://www.curl.com/html/products/pricing.jsp. But http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/06/211322 7 [slashdot.org] has someone saying "Then wander over to http://www.curl.com/html/products/pricing.jsp and look at the fact that you have to commit to sending Curl a minimum of $1000/month (max of $50,000/month) to use Curl to deliver content. And the cost is based on how many characters you serve. Not, on how much revenue it generates." No prices are on that page, however, nor in Google's cached copy.

    (Above saved to the above mentioned slashdot discussion of 8/6/01.)

  • Curl's real strength (Score:4, Funny)

    by smallpaul ( 65919 ) <paul @ p r e s c o d . net> on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @02:48AM (#2135469)
    ...is to generate press releases, news articles and Slashdot threads. I've never heard anyone use it. I just hear people pointing it out to each other and saying: "Tim Berners-Lee backs it." As if that automatically makes it more interesting than all of the other languages (client and server side) out there.

    Pay as you go looks like a pretty clear way to kill a programming language to me...
    • The Berners-Lee connection will only serve to sucker venture capitalists.

      If Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley [aethmogen.com] came out with an exciting new expansion card bus specification, would we automatically listen to them? Why not, I mean, c'mon, they invented the transistor, right? Who better to design modern computer hardware? Right?

      Sheesh.

      I don't WANT pages more complex than what you can get out of PHP anyway...
  • Great. This'll make it even harder to find the cURL [curl.haxx.se] page in search engines.

    cURL is a library that transfers files via protocols that use URL syntax. Given the trademark happy nature of the web site mentioned in this article, I suspect that there'll be a name fight in the future.

  • Your second article on Curl reminded me that I never uninstalled it after the first article. Thanks!

    --Steve
  • Is it just me, or does Curl seem very Lisp influenced?

  • old news? (Score:3, Informative)

    by dyregod ( 90855 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:15AM (#2136537) Homepage
    again? http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/06/1335241.shtm l

  • What about ActionScript & fun stuff ? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by beanerspace ( 443710 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @05:14AM (#2136577) Homepage
    Okay, let me understand this. To harness the vast power of my client-side CPU (just sitting there idle, itching to get into the Internet game), I need to install the Surge(TM) plug-in 1.1 or the Surge Lab(TM) IDE Beta 5. The result, rich Web content.

    Which I wouldn't mind, except I think I already have something like that called the MacroMedia Flash Plug-in, well in my case Flash.

    Only with Flash, I don't have to worry about too much about the learning curve that comes with Curl's seven different integer primitives because ActionScript is a weiner'd down version of ECMAScript.

    Moreover, I can leverage Flash & ActionScript on the client side with languages I already know, and are usually available on the server side, such as PHP, Ruby, Perl ... along with the vast libraries associated with languages (fun stuff).

    Similarly, MacroMedia has opened up it's file format that has given rise to a variety of UNIX, Win and MAC development solutions.

    Considering all this, do I really need CURL ?

  • wow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by janpod66 ( 323734 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @02:21AM (#2136987)
    $5M from DARPA, $50M from venture investments. Berners-Lee, Dertouzos, and a bunch of MIT professors sure have selling power. And all of that for doing what current web standards are already doing, just with a more Lisp-ish syntax. It would sure be lucrative to replace a messy open standard with a messy proprietary one.

    Lucky for us, and too bad for them it won't fly. People who have actually worked on large-scale web development already know that mixing code and content in this way is a maintenance headache. And the others seem reasonably happy with JavaScript and VBScript.

    • Even code/content separation isn't enough in truly large products. Many medium to large projects separate it out in code, design and content.

      I'm using that approach even in most non-web applications I write these days.

  • TM TM TM wonderful TM (Score:5, Interesting)

    by interiot ( 50685 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:23AM (#2148187) Homepage
    I count 5 TM's on their homepage and several mentions of patents on their legal page [curl.com].

    Curl may not be any more proprietary than Java, but the site constantly bares its legal teeth at you. My gut reaction is to stay away.

  • Wonderfl... (Score:2, Funny)

    by sludgely ( 447712 )
    HTML and Javascript merge, yet just watch as iexplore gets exploited by more malicious code...

  • Uhh (Score:2, Troll)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 )
    Blah Blah, old news, Blah, Blah, Blah

    Wake up people, some things are worth repeating. Neat technology that doesn't get attention that it deserves is sometimes worth a second article. Instead of pointing out the obvious, try talking about the technology itself.

    • Curl is several years old. It was picking up a little momentum as a freely available language/browser (source available) hosted from an MIT page (http://curl.lcs.mit.edu/curl/). It was an academic project with a grant from DARPA. IIRC, the academic page simply disappeared one day (maybe I've just been unlucky every time I try to access it; it's cached on google).

      A year or so later, the commercial page showed up with mounds of reeking lawyer-speak.

      The idea is pretty good, but it had a hard time taking off when it was free. Maybe it would make sense for someone to do a similar Lisp/TeX cross, but their attitude toward how to promote it is so ridiculously wrong that it's obviously not going anywhere in its current form.

      Don't you just love it when government-funded academic research gets fenced off by a clueless corporation?
  • This has already been featured once at /.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/06/133524 1&mode=nested [slashdot.org]

  • man (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vsync64 ( 155958 ) <vsync@quadium.net> on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:15AM (#2149701) Homepage
    This is seriously old news. I remember seeing this months ago.

    I imagine my assessment at the time still stands: Using a plugin as the deployment technology could be useful to get a critical mass of developers and libraries, until it becomes semi-standard. However, since I can't recall seeing anything at all related to Curl in these months since the last story, I'd say critical mass is not forthcoming. :(

    • Re:man (Score:3, Interesting)

      by interiot ( 50685 )
      Tim Berners-Lee's other project, the WorldWideWeb, took a couple years to become well-known. (four years after conception, only .1% of the backbone traffic was due to WWW) Give it some time.

      • Re:man (Score:3, Insightful)

        by unitron ( 5733 )
        Instead of Berners-Lee putting money into it, you'd think they'd pay him to attach his name to it.

        Unless, of course, Tim's been thinking 'bout how everybody 'cept him got to ride the gravy train he shoveled all the coal for, and decided it was time for him to hit the jackpot too.

        • Re:man (Score:2, Informative)

          by khuber ( 5664 )
          I wouldn't say TBL "shoveled all the coal" for the WWW.

          The infrastructure and many protocols were already in place.

          TBL did invent HTTP, HTML, and the use of the URL which proved very successful for the task, however, and very innovative compared to WAIS and Gopher which were already running. The URL is really what allowed many protocols to be tied together conveniently.

          -Kevin

  • Skeptical. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdCOWc.net minus herbivore> on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:51AM (#2149792) Homepage
    Touting this as being a cross between HTML and Javascript makes me wonder why anyone would want to use it.
    Javascript is one of the worst implimentations of a bad idea that I've seen.
    One of the basic tenets of client server programming is "Never Trust The Client". Yet still, people write shopping carts that calculate totals and shipping charges in javascript, then trust the client to send back accurate data. I'm sure that TBL knows this, but is he expecting that every curl developer has even taken a basic CS class and will remember that? I doubt it. Developers will look to push as much of the processing as possible off to the client, imposing more security risks. They say they use a 'sandbox' - doesn't VBScript say the same thing?
    Also, their micropayment scheme is going to turn a lot of people off. First they say how this has been developed using the same grant as the WWW, (my tax money?) then they explain that if I put up 'curl' code on my site, I've got to pay them per user. Sure. No problem. Next!
    Why don't I just put up a page of C++ source and tell people to "lynx -source http://code_url|gcc"?
    Sure, whatever...

    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo

    • Yet still, people write shopping carts that calculate totals and shipping charges in javascript, then trust the client to send back accurate data.

      That's poor implementation by the developer. Shopping carts should be implemented on the server side.

      I very rarely agree with the NRA, but guns don't kill people, people kill people.

    • stop with the making of new crap! All i want to see is making what we have now work right on all platforms and the way it's supposed to.

      Besides, IE and Netscape don't even support HTML or JavaScript completely in every way, in exactly the same way.
    • uh, javascript isnt just a clientside language. and it certainly wasnt a bad idea. its a pretty sweet language.

    • Re:Skeptical. (Score:2, Funny)

      by Kynde ( 324134 )
      Why don't I just put up a page of C++ source and tell people to "lynx -source http://code_url|gcc"?
      Sure, whatever...

      And get haunted late at night because of all the guilt you have for letting people see all the compiler errors for not piping it to g++ ?
      Sure, why not... :)

      -

    • Re:Skeptical. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jallen02 ( 124384 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @08:45AM (#2123139) Homepage Journal
      First, Javascript is a good idea. The language is small easy to use and gets the job done.

      Second the implementation in current browsers leaves a little to be wanting.

      Lets talk about the merits of the language if we are going to slam it. Do not talk about a language being inherently good or bad OR the implementation of the LANGUAGE being good or bad if you are just going to be critical of the stupid things people do with JavaScript.

      People do stupid things in ANY programming language on ANY platform EVERYWHERE.

      I am not sure what the point was to your post other than to be sarcastic or funny.

      Any web developers worth a grain of salt knows that you can't trust data from the client. For every bit of JavaScript data validation I have written there is a nice set of validation routines the data is put through ON the server.

      I think inexperienced developers may put the work to the client exclusively but this again has nothing to do with the merits or flaws of JavaScript as a language IMO.

      I have been using client side validation for as long as I have developed web applications (almost five years now). When people use our intranet we require them to use JavaScript. Why? It enhances the user experience enough that the use of JavaScript is justifiable. 999/1000 times the client is not trying to hack you. What does it hurt to do a little client side validation. This will get 99% of your bad data. Then you ship it to your server validation routines and it all goes smoothly. No extra trips back to the client/server just to validate the data and get the required information in the proper format... all done in one trip to the server. This not only makes an application more robust it makes the application feel smoother for the end user.

      My point being people complain about JavaScript when truly they are complaning about the implementations of other developers, Not the browser implementation and Not the actual language itself. It is just easier to say its all crap and ignore it and blame other developers for being idiots right?

      Jeremy
      • I have been using client side validation for as long as I have developed web applications (almost five years now). When people use our intranet we require them to use JavaScript.

        And all the sysadmins, and every clueful technical user in your company hates you. Why? Because they have to enable Javascript to use your Intranet site, and then quickly turn it off before revisiting the Net at large?

        And why is that? You already know why, but you're shoving Javascript down your fellow employees' throats for your own convenience: Client-side Javascript in Web browsers has proven time and again to be one of the biggest security disasters in existence.

        You say that's an implementation problem? Fine, show me even one browser implementation where Javascript cannot be used to steal the user's files, to pop up an endless series of windows so that the user has to kill his browser or X11 to recover, and to implement spyware. All I ask is one. It can even be a sucky browser, rather than, say, Galeon, Mozilla, Konqueror, or Skipstone.

        Until you do, Javascript remains a trap for the clueless -- and you are shooting your co-workers in the foot. At any sane company, one where the Web staff are not allowed to run amok at the company's expense, that would be forcibly curtailed by management decree.

        Rick Moen
        rick@linuxmafia.com

  • Merging standards (Score:3, Interesting)

    by perdida ( 251676 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .tcejorptaerhteht.> on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:46AM (#2149875) Homepage Journal
    How is this viewed generally in terms of Web development. It seems to be something that was designed specifically for this intercompatability. i would like to know what has been compromised in terms of other functionalities for CURL, in order to be all things to all people? Especially since as a plugin, it will be something that people can try and remove quickly if they don't like it. As has been discussed in previous posts there has not been a lot of interest thus far. If it were kickass, it would be a little more popular now 'cause everyone can use it with their existing work on the web, right?

    Furthermore, I have always believed that a universal standard is not always a good thing for its own sake. Consider the commercial applications of sites on the Web that are only readable through a particular technology, and translator programs do not capture the full glory of the site. Yes you can translate but it's like dewatermarking a copyrighted music file, it sounds and looks like shit. For visual media on the Net, like maybe sitcoms or whatever that want to broadcast there rather than on TV, it would probably be a good idea to write in a language that's isolated from others commonly used on the Web. I could even see rules that make the .tv domains specifically restricted to sites in such isolative languages, in order to support TV-appliance technology using the Web and other peripheral economies.

    • Yes you can translate but it's like dewatermarking a copyrighted music file, it sounds and looks like shit.

      Actually, de-watermarking copyrighted files has been demonstrated to work with no discernable degradation in audio quality. There may have even been a general mathematical proof presented that any watermark which does not leave a discernable trace in the watermarked file can be removed without leaving a discernable trace ... I don't recall for certain if a general proof was submitted, but I do know that a paper was to be presented at a technical forum some months ago demonstrating that all of the major watermarking approaches being considered by the RIAA could be removed with no discernable degradation in the music.

      The paper in question is available [cryptome.org] on the internet, although it was never formally presented at the conference due to legal threats [bbc.co.uk] under the DMCA from the commercial entities promoting the watermarking technology, who obviously had a vested interest in keeping this information quiet and promoting the mistaken notion that watermarking can be an effective deterrent to copyright violation (and perhaps even fair use).

      It is interesting that the industry which relies most heavily on copyright, the computer software industry, learned more than a decade ago that copy protection schemes, along with watermarking schemes, were unworkable and ultimately a waste in resources and dumped the entire approach altogether. This lesson, which demonstrated itself in no uncertain terms in the large profits of software houses despite their lack of copy protection and the ease with which their copyrights can be (and likely are) violated, has apparently been lost on the entertainment industry, due perhaps in no small part to organizations like the SDMI group who prey upon the entertainment industry's niavite with respect to copy protection and watermarking for their own purposes.

      I suspect ultimately the Copyright Cartels (MPAA, RIAA, etc.) will find they have been taken to cleaners far more by their own "copy protection" vendors, who have sold them a bill of goods even the DMCA's most draconian provisions can't compensate for, than by their customers' fair use practices and even outright copyright violations. Seeing this lightbulb go on in a Hollywood Mogul's eye would be an event worth paying admission to see.
  • After various experiences with client-side yohoo (java, flash, etc. ad nauseistic download and install), I just can't support another client-side app for the Internet. Not to say that these things don't sometimes have their good points, but until workstation computers get a whole lot faster, it just makes a lot more sense to me to deal with things server-side, and even when computing speed increases, I'd expect to see a lot more complexity in what the computer is expected to handle. Unfortunately, this includes the reluctant assumption that, for the next decade or so, windoze is probably going to be the dominant OS for the majority of users, and given their track record, I don't expect clock times to be freed up by increases in hardware.
    Here's my proposal (the same one I made to my CS prof once upon a time): There are only about a half dozen or so operating systems which spend much time browsing. If we're really going to develop a language that is usable for high-level internet functionality, have it be one which automatically runs make for all these operating systems at once.(Of course, this will require it to be architecture-independant, which will be some fancy juju) Then, when the server gets a request, it sends back the "correct" code for the machine which sent the request. Since it's already compiled, there's no time-wasting disk spinning on somebody's celeron, and the server handles it just like any other request. The page loads as it always would. Sort of like a muscular CGI, I suppose.
    Just promise not to flame me too hard :P
    • Not meaning to be condescending but this is the difference between academia and the real world. Porting a product to another platform is not just a matter of writing make. You have tons of issues to deal with: compiler idiosyncracies, byte-endian assumptions (yes they are bad, but there are cases where they become important), operating system interface differences .. the subtler the worse it is.

      On top of all of this the real kicker is the amount of testing and release engineering you have to do on each platform before shipping it. Believe me you have to do this. Defects are a way of life with real products.

      About this language, I'm sceptical of a new replacement for everything. Second, who uses Java on the client-side anyway ? The beauty of Java is that server-side stuff is cross-platform. Java on the client is just another language. I think we're doing just well for various approaches to separate content and logic.

      Finally we've put in a whole load of internet infrastructure for dynamic caching. Separating content from logic will also allow us to be even more aggressive with caching fragments of web pages all over the 'net. I'm not sure how a proprietary solution will work ..

      IMO these guys are probably angling to be bought by Microsoft.

  • Here's a headline (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cardhore ( 216574 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:29AM (#2149991) Homepage Journal
    "New language CURL ditches all existing web work for a proprietary, windows-only format."

    Even shockwave is more cross-platform.

    I doubt that anyone will implement this in websites. It's taken five years to get a decent implementation of CSS1, and that's still not used widely.
  • CURL is a production based presentation languge, ala PostScript. There is NO way to do anything meaningful to it once it is written, without using a human mind, and maybe not then.

    Production languages take that whole little layout/content seperation theory you may have heard of, and ignore it completely. Crap, crap, I say!
    • Nope, it's what we have been wanting all along. While some content (e.g. books, manuals, newspaper articles, etc) is suitable for viewing in different formats, on paper, on the web, or read loud, there also exists lot's of reasons for creating media-specific content. Do you want every new movie to be available in MOVXML so that you can automatically generate actor scripts, lighting instructions, animated scenes, and what else, but never actually enjoy the actors playing on the scene, because the format the movie was delivered in was content-based instead of presentation based (after all, actors are just presentation)?

      If there is one thing the web needs right now, it is freedom from the vision of the semantic web, and all those other idiotic visions keeping us from progressing further. There is nothing wrong with the semantic web per se, but it is not, and should not be the solution for everybody's needs. If the people at W3C had realized this when they started, instead of making overly complicated standards trying to catering for everyone's need, we might even have had a useful web by now. A simple presentation language for people wanting to describe layout precisely, and a still-simple HTML-variant for describing content. If you were worried about both, you would be fucked of course, but very few people are.

      If you are still not convinced, let's look at a few examples:

      • Slashdot and other discussion-based sites: Presentation language is needed, nobody prints out slashdot anyway.
      • Shopping sites, online banks, intranet usage with forms, etc...: ditto
      • Online comics: ditto
      • Gutenberg project: HTML
      • Newspapers: presentation based, with HTML access for a subscription

      ...etc. The layout/content separation theory is good in theory, but I think it's on time to start liberating ourselves a bit from it now. It has been over 10 years with the web, and still very few are happy with the way it works.

      • > If there is one thing the web needs right now, it is freedom from the vision of the semantic web, and all those other idiotic visions keeping us from progressing further.

        right...
        nope, you're wrong. There is simply no way for the web to be what it needs to be if it doesnt become semantic.

        I dont think you understand my real objection. I was tired when I wrote the first post. Production language are "write-only". You can't manipulate them programatically. This is bad.
  • If you look at section 6 in the license agreement at section 6 in the license agreement [curl.com] you will find that this is just a piece of spyware!


    I would not load this plugin if it allows the reporting of what i have been viewing with it and also allowing the plug-in to block the content i am trying to view? I have a feeling that this will not be accepted by the general internet community and not by those developers that care about their users privacy!

  • The best part about deja vu... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kletus Cassidy ( 230405 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:35AM (#2150480)
    ...is being able to read the most insightful comments all in one place.

    Curl Instead of Java or JavaScript? [slashdot.org]posted by michael on Friday April 06, @02:56PM

    Re:Java, anyone? [slashdot.org](Score:5, Insightful) by Jason Earl (jdearl@yahoo.com)

    Some more words... [slashdot.org] (Score:5, Insightful)by guku on Friday April 06, @03:18PM EST

    Commentary [slashdot.org] (Score:5, Insightful)by Nohea (sd at nohea dot com) on Friday April 06, @03:16PM EST

    Curl == Spyware [slashdot.org] (Score:5, Insightful)by stonewolf on Friday April 06, @03:45PM EST

  • New Language Actually Found to be Old Language (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tswinzig ( 210999 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:24AM (#2150935) Journal
    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/06/133524 1&mode=thread [slashdot.org]

    How hard is it to do a search of your own website for "Curl"?
    • The thing about hate about Slashdot is the hypocrisy. When you submit a comment it says something like, "Don't like what you submitted? You should have hit the Preview button." Then they act as if everything's peachy when they post the same news story twice. And not just once in awhile. This has been happening a lot lately. Duh, use a "preview button", Malda et al.
    • fucking eh.. big ups to that point dude..

      ---

      I have no more mana so I am gonna waste bandwidth.

    • I've suggested this before, but it would not be very hard to add this to slashcode, to make it easier on the editors. Yeah, (-1 Offtopic) but there ain't no Meta section.

      • Are all the urls in a story submission identical to those in another story in the queue? (Is THIS a match or subset of OTHER, linkwise?) If so, insta-reject with an explanation that someone else has already covered the subject at least as thoroughly.
      • Is this submission a superset of another that is earlier in the queue? Mark the earlier but lesser submission internally, so the editors can see and compare the two for the better submission.
      • Find the most uncommon words in the submitted headline and story. Are all those words also in another submission or posted top-level story? If so, mark the submission internally, so the editor can see and compare the earlier story for relevance.
      • Give more info to the rejected submitter. If there's internal auto-notes like the above points suggest, this can help the submitter know why their version was rejected. Oh, already submitted. Oh, too similar to old story. Oh, referenced URL isn't even valid. Oh, Taco hates me. Okay, I can live with that.

      If the editors don't like combing through a submission queue, then they need to make the queue smarter to do the most tedious tasks. Then they can focus on other things, like learning the word 'than' or getting support engineers to quit their jobs.

    • This is probably a new release. I don't remember why I decided I wasn't interested the last time I looked it over (but it might have something to do with licensing).

      Still, it wasn't really released at the time of the previous story. Maybe it's been released now.

  • Commentary (Score:4, Redundant)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07, 2001 @01:36AM (#2151224)
    Read the license agreement at http://www.curl.com/html/products/surge_license.js p and tell me why I, or anyone else in their right mind would load a plug in that allows the plug in to report on what you have viewed with it and also allows the plug in to block content!
    Then wander over to http://www.curl.com/html/products/pricing.jsp and look at the fact that you have to commit to sending Curl a minimum of $1000/month (max of $50,000/month) to use Curl to deliver content. And the cost is based on how many characters you serve. Not, on how much revenue it generates.

    This product looks more like misguided megalomania than like product that stands a chance of actually being used by anyone.

    Technically, it acutally looks pretty good. But, the business model and the privacy policy are, well... They're insane.

    StoneWolf

    • Re:Commentary (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sethg ( 15187 )
      Disclaimer: a friend of mine works for Curl.

      You're thinking "what end-user would want to spend that kind of money and put up with those restrictions?" The proper question, though, is "how many corporations would consider the benefits of Curl to be worth setting up a Curl server on their intranet?"

      (Of course, the answer may be "not enough to give the VCs anything close to the return on investment they were hoping for"...)

  • From the Curl website:

    Second, by harnessing the vast power of client-side computing. We take advantage of that 90 percent or more of a typical computer user's CPU that's just sitting there idle, itching to get into the Internet game.

    Jebus, don't tell Intel .. their marketing strategy for selling next-generation CPUs is convincing the client that their CPU can't even /handle/ browsing the net!

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