Welcome to Rahul's NewtonScript information page
NewtonScript is a programming language used to create software for the Apple Newton
PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). The Newton is no longer produced by Apple, and the
website for it has been removed, along with all the developer links. But still, there is
a large number of people which use the Newton and make software for it.
The language was designed by Walter Smith.
It's design was infulenced by LISP and SELF.It is a special purpose language, and like
a lot of other special purpose languages, it is very liberal. No variables need to be
declared. The type of a variable can be declared at compile time. The language is object
oriented, but it follows a single layer abstraction paradym. I haven't come across any
such language yet, but the author claims that when designing GUI applications, declaring
direct objects, instead of using a data model, is a more natural approach. The
Language has some oddities, like the fact that to add a tripple nested field into a
record, like person.address.city.zip can be added by just a simple assignment,
person.address.city.zip:=32901, but to add an element to an array, it must be done
explicitly by using addArraySlot(ArrName, Number). Other languages that allow dynamic
addition to arrays usually work the vice versa. An exhaustive review of this language is
provided on
The NewtonScript Programming Language written by
Arno Schoedl.
Some sample code for NewtonScript can be found on a page that is simply called
NewtonScript. It also
contains some sample packages. This site is a part of the
Apple Newton Webring. The webring contains a few sites which have a little
information on the Newton.
Some languages that are similar to the Newton are, AWK, BASIC, etc. NewtonScript's
syntax is largely similar to Pascal. It combines it with the liberal concept of BASIC,
hence making a language that is very easy to learn. This has triggered a lot of hobby
programmers to go into it and produce a large variety of shareware and freeware software
in it. A more restrictive programming group, might find it uneasy, since it gives a lot
of margin for error. NewtonScript could possibly be considered a programming alternative
on a lot of programming problems, but as an application development enviorment for the
comercial market, it is not really the best alternative.