Comment 17 for bug 579337

I think, instead of redesigning GNUSim8085, it would possibly be better to integrate a scripting language such as lua, so that certain functionality can increasingly become customizable by editing scripts.

Implementing support for other processors, but also implementing support for emulating peripherals, is probably better done by a scripting language instead of hardcoding anything.

The only thing that's important though would be a lightweight and fast cross platform scripting language.

You may want to check out "nasal" (http://www.plausible.org/nasal) which is a threadsafe functional programming language written in ANSI C (GPL), Nasal can easily provide an iteration rate of several dozens khz on modern machines..

It's syntax is similar to JavaScript, but it's much easier to embed and very small, too.

Another point in support of checking out nasal is the fact that it has already gtk bindings.
So much of the current UI could probably easily ported at some point once the need arises.

Here are screenshot of two applications that were largely written in nasal using these gtk bindings:
http://www.bitminds.net/kymatica/index.php/Software/AlgoScore#screenshots
http://www.bitminds.net/kymatica/index.php/Software/KyCE

Hope this helps