yoob

yoob is a framework for implementing esoteric programming languages in Java. It aims to make it easy for a user to experiment with a large number of esolangs with a minimal install burden (i.e. in a Java applet), and to make it easy for designers to rapidly implement and showcase their esolangs.

See also: yoob.js.

Features

yoob provides interfaces and base classes for components commonly used in the implementation of esolangs, including program states, playfields, and tapes. This allows one to implement an esolang, similar to existing esolangs, fairly rapidly.

yoob "understands" how to control, display, and animate an esolang, so long as it is implemented in a way that conforms to the interfaces that it provides. It uses this "understanding" to provide a graphical, interactive Java GUI (potentially in an applet) for developing in the language. It could also in theory provide other interfaces, such as a traditional command-line interface, to any yoob-conformant implementation.

A Note on Tapes

Tapes are depicted vertically, rotated 90 clockwise from the traditional horizontal orientation: the "left" of the tape is at the top of the display and the "right" of the tape is at the bottom. This is because in many esolangs, each tape cell may contain an unbounded integer, and in Arabic numeral notation, this takes up more horizontal area than vertical; thus displaying the tape vertically is a more efficient use of screen area.

History

The current released version of yoob is 0.3. There are a few minor UI improvements in this version, but the main enhancement is that example programs are modelled as proper Java objects, and they support being loaded from remote URLs. This allows esolang implementations which are under one license to have example programs which are under another license; this in turn allows a few esolang implementations (Ale, Sceql, Qdeql) to be released in this distribution without embedded (possibly non-public domain) example programs, thus keeping the whole distribution in the public domain.

The previous released version of yoob was 0.2. I decided to release it, in spite of the source being embarassingly bad, so that the masses might mock it, and perhaps, in their collective moment of weakness, submit patches, or at least actionable flames (note: actionable.)

Version 0.1 of yoob was purely a technology preview and was never officially released.

The API should not be expected to be stable through the 0.x series.

Development

See the yoob entry at Cat's Eye Technologies for details of development.

TODO

(Scavenged from some miscellaneous notes I made at one point. Not sure how much of this duplicates what's on the Issue Tracker.)

• Allow different alternate views to be selected between. (3)
• Actual error handling.
• Specify which example program to initially select on command line (1)
• Some way to link directly to a particular language in the applet, using Javascript (2)
• A test harness, including specifying how many cycles to run and what playfields/tapes should look like afterwards and mocking I/O (5)
• Improve BasicStack to raise an exception or something on underflow.
• Allow PRNG to be seeded (not just seeded but supplied with a series of values to produce)
• Welcome panel - HTML doesn't cut it in some browsers (?)
• Document the policy for mutation of Playfields and Tapes and States and such. (?)

For Further Information

For further information, please see the yoob entry at Cat's Eye Technologies.

Yet more information can be found in the yoob article on the esowiki.

An instance of yoob running as a Java JNLP application can be found in the yoob installation at Cat's Eye Technologies.