> Here, "binary" simply means "not text", just as for instance images or zipped files are binary.
If it's not text, then what is it? I'm not sure "not text" is a good definition of the word "binary".
> A compiler typically goes from a high-level language to a lower-level language, losing data.
I don't agree, I don't think there is any loss in data, the compiled-to representation should cover everything you wanted to do (I suppose not counting tree-shaking or comment removal).
> I prefer calling this a compression mechanism, insofar as you can decompress without loss (well, minus layout and possibly comments).
Ahh, so you mean without losing the original textual representation of the source file.
> Wasm is about native code
Here you are making claims about their project that are just not the whole picture. Here's the one-line vision from their homepage[1]:
> WebAssembly or wasm is a new portable, size- and load-time-efficient format suitable for compilation to the web.
With that description in mind, how do you see BinAST as different?
> Well, we're trying to solve a different problem :)
I think you might be misunderstanding what wasm is intended for. Here's a blurb from the wasm docs that is pertinent:
> A JavaScript API is provided which allows JavaScript to compile WebAssembly modules, perform limited reflection on compiled modules, store and retrieve compiled modules from offline storage, instantiate compiled modules with JavaScript imports, call the exported functions of instantiated modules, alias the exported memory of instantiated modules, etc.
The main difference I can gather is that you are intending BinAST to allow better reflection on compiled modules than wasm intends to support.
Here's another excerpt from their docs (and others have mentioned this elsewhere):
> Once GC is supported, WebAssembly code would be able to reference and access JavaScript, DOM, and general WebIDL-defined objects.
Text means a sequence of characters conforming to some character encoding. Yoric's binary AST is not a sequence of characters conforming to a character encoding.
Compilation maps a program in a higher level language to a program in a lower level language. The map is not required to be one-to-one: the colloquial term for this is "lossy."
If it's not text, then what is it? I'm not sure "not text" is a good definition of the word "binary".
> A compiler typically goes from a high-level language to a lower-level language, losing data.
I don't agree, I don't think there is any loss in data, the compiled-to representation should cover everything you wanted to do (I suppose not counting tree-shaking or comment removal).
> I prefer calling this a compression mechanism, insofar as you can decompress without loss (well, minus layout and possibly comments).
Ahh, so you mean without losing the original textual representation of the source file.
> Wasm is about native code
Here you are making claims about their project that are just not the whole picture. Here's the one-line vision from their homepage[1]:
> WebAssembly or wasm is a new portable, size- and load-time-efficient format suitable for compilation to the web.
With that description in mind, how do you see BinAST as different?
> Well, we're trying to solve a different problem :)
I think you might be misunderstanding what wasm is intended for. Here's a blurb from the wasm docs that is pertinent:
> A JavaScript API is provided which allows JavaScript to compile WebAssembly modules, perform limited reflection on compiled modules, store and retrieve compiled modules from offline storage, instantiate compiled modules with JavaScript imports, call the exported functions of instantiated modules, alias the exported memory of instantiated modules, etc.
The main difference I can gather is that you are intending BinAST to allow better reflection on compiled modules than wasm intends to support.
Here's another excerpt from their docs (and others have mentioned this elsewhere):
> Once GC is supported, WebAssembly code would be able to reference and access JavaScript, DOM, and general WebIDL-defined objects.
[1]: http://webassembly.org/
[META: Wow, I thought downvotes were for negative or offtopic comments]