Corona: Another 3rd-party iPhone development SDK is now open to developers for pre-beta testing.
One thing that sets this SDK apart: The engineers are “former Adobe mobile software veterans” who worked on the mobile Flash ecosystem.
And no, the programming language is not ActionScript or JavaScript, but is Lua – a simple scripting language that should be easy for ActionScript developers to pickup. One thing uncertain to me is whether Corona is generating native Objective-C code from Lua code, or simply interprets the Lua code at runtime (I certainly hope it’s not the latter).
At the moment, there is no public distribution build. The only way to test a project is by using the Corona Simulator that comes with the SDK. Corona is still at its early stage, and the final product is targeting end of Q3 2009.
As Apple has been known to reject apps for unknown reasons, many PhoneGap developers have encountered the most-feared notice that their app is rejected. One possible reason is PhoneGap relies on the Safari JavaScript engine, and JavaScript code is interpreted at runtime, which is not allowed by the Apple SDK agreement.
For me, there are some important questions:
- Does Corona generate native Objective-C code or interprets Lua code at runtime?
- How much does the final distribution license cost?
- How stable is the final code?
- Is memory management handled efficiently?
Nevertheless, it is good to see more 3rd-party tools and SDKs for iPhone development.
Update: Today (June 24), this article talks about Corona. “When the developer has his Lua code the way he wants it, he submits it to the Ansca Web site, where it will be compiled into an iPhone application ready to submit to Apple’s App Store.”
Even though it seems to simplify the workflow, this may not be ideal because:
- the complete project and code is submitted to Ansca
- sounds like the developer does not get any Objective-C code for tweaking
- developer is locked into Ansca’s terms for future deployment
Hopefully Ansca would address these concerns in their FAQ or forum soon.