
Helvetia – A lightweight approach to embed new languages into the host language - joubert
http://scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia
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blauditore
Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6rmlBNh...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6rmlBNhZ9cIJ:scg.unibe.ch/research/helvetia+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=ch)

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equalunique
This is relevant to the rabbit hole I have been going down this afternoon.
Time to see if these two can be combined.

 _Like many other scripting languages, Web Prolog lacks some of the
capabilities of general purpose programming languages, such as file I /O,
access to the OS and a foreign language interface, but since a Prolog Web node
is implemented on top of a general purpose programming language it should be
straightforward to delegate the need for such operations to this language. A
programmer wishing to implement an application that needs to perform e.g. file
I/O needs to be knowledgeable in the host language. For some nodes, it
probably makes sense to offer an interface between Web Prolog and the host
language. In the case of SWI-Prolog, such an interface is obviously already
there._

Torbj¨orn Lager (2018, June 18). _Web Prolog and the Programmable Web_.
Retrieved from: [https://github.com/Web-Prolog/swi-web-
prolog/raw/master/book...](https://github.com/Web-Prolog/swi-web-
prolog/raw/master/book/web-prolog.pdf)

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lrenggli
I am the author of Helvetia, feel free to ask me anything!

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yhoneycomb
How did you decide on the name? I feel like it’s interesting but too easily
confused with Helvetica, which could get annoying

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lrenggli
We decided on the name because in Switzerland there are 4 official languages
spoken and written; but all the infrastructure is shared (the promise of the
tool). Helvetia is an alternate name for Switzerland:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Switzerland#Helvetia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Switzerland#Helvetia).

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nkrisc
Asking as someone with a very shallow familiarity with Scandinavian languages:
is there any connection to the Norwegian 'helvete', often translated to
English as 'Hell'?

EDIT: Adding this since I found it after asking
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHell,_Norway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHell,_Norway)

Answer seems to be "probably not"

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atombender
"Helvete" comes from Old Norse _helvíti_ , a combination of hel (death, also
the land of the dead and the goddess Hel) + víti (punishment).

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solarkraft
Do I understand corectly that this is mostly about syntax transformation?
Wouldn't that be quite error-prone or inefficient due to subtle or not so
subtle differences between languages?

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vanderZwan
I suspect that's why there are three paths to take - but I think hearing the
explanation that it comes along with would help a lot to clarify things.

EDIT: I found this YouTube video from 2011 - and the source code has not been
updated since 2012. I wonder if there are any newer projects inspired by it?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuQ73eYum14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuQ73eYum14)

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iagooar
Swiss, and their original naming of things :D

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fredley
"Helvetia" is how I pronounced Helvetica for a long time as a kid, until
someone pointed out to me that there was a c in there.

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horriblePun
Didn't you c it before?

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nickpsecurity
For anyone confused a bit, here is the author's thesis on Helvetia that goes
into a lot more detail:

[http://scg.unibe.ch/archive/phd/renggli-
phd.pdf](http://scg.unibe.ch/archive/phd/renggli-phd.pdf)

