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Lingo is a scripting language developed by John Thompson for use in Macromedia Director. It has been said that HyperTalk was one of the inspirations for Lingo.
When Lingo was created, the syntax was designed to mimic spoken language, so it would be easy for beginners to get started. You could write whole sentences like:
if the visible of sprite 5 then go to the frame
Although it is still possible to use the old syntax, the latest version of the language fully supports dot syntax, so that the code looks more like in standard programming languages.
The equivalent in new scripting style would be:
if sprite(5).visible then _movie.go(_movie.frame)
Usage
Lingo is embedded into Macromedia Director. This way you dont need to care much about hardware or details of getting things on the screen - the program does this for you.
Because of the structure of Director, it somewhat encourages the user to write code in an Object oriented style. Higher abstraction is however not encouraged; scripts are attached to each sprite (this script is then called behavior) to control that sprite's properties and movement.
Imaging Lingo
A very powerful part of the language is Imaging Lingo. It was introduced when Director version 8.0 arrived. It gives the user the power of image manipulation with simple commands. There are some similarities to functions of image applications (like Photoshop), what makes it easy to create visual effects.
External Links
Useful Resources
Mailing Lists
- Direct-L (http://listserv.uark.edu/archives/direct-l.html) is probably the biggest Lingo mailing list
- Dirgames-L (http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dirgames-l) is a list about Lingo for games
- Director-3D-L (http://nuttybar.drama.uga.edu/mailman/listinfo/dir3d-l) is a pure 3D-Lingo list
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