Re: WASM / Web Assembly ecl in a browser

Dear Jon,

interacting between Lisp and javascript in a browser can be done by 
directly calling functions from ECL's C interface from javascript or 
vice-versa using the available methods to call javascript from C and 
ECL's C foreign function interface. A description for how to call C from 
javascript and vice-versa can be found at 
https://emscripten.org/docs/porting/connecting_cpp_and_javascript/Interacting-with-code.html

Another thing to keep in mind is the asynchronous nature of javascript 
running in a browser which does not integrate easily with the 
synchronous IO interface of Common Lisp. If you want to keep the Lisp 
runtime running in the background, waiting for input to arrive, there 
are two options: either compile with LDFLAGS="-sASYNCIFY" 
(https://emscripten.org/docs/porting/asyncify.html) or run ECL in a 
separate thread (by means of a WebWorker) while communicating with the 
UI thread via Atomics.wait and SharedArrayBuffer's.

For an example of the latter option, you can look at the ECL repl 
https://repl.chee.party/ that Daniel has linked to or also at 
https://sourceforge.net/u/mgerbershagen/maxima/ci/emscripten-port/tree/ 
which contains a very rough early-stage port of the maxima computer 
algebra system to a browser environment (in particular the wasm 
subdirectory and the src/ecl-port.lisp file are relevant).

Best regards,

Marius Gerbershagen

Am 30.12.23 um 14:39 schrieb Jón Hallur Haraldsson:
> Hi,
> 
> I've been toying around with the idea to run ecl in the browser since it 
> is now easy to build it using emscripten.
> 
> I have successfully interacted with the runtime using the extremely 
> awkward "window.prompt" native javascript pop up.
> 
> My experience in using ECL is in embedding it in C/C++
> 
> Has someone successfully used it to run in the browser without using the 
> "wasm-draw-to-canvas" and "windows.prompt" REPL
> 
> I'm assuming that this has nothing to do with ECL and is purely how 
> emscripten works.
> 
> Can I write a more embedded version which does not require me to 
> interact through the REPL in the browser.
> 
> If anyone has done any similar things I'd really like to hear about them.
> 
> Kindest regards.
> 
> Jon Hallur