The term computer language is used to refer to all languages used to communicate with a computer. There are many types of computer languages, some of which are:
As Wikipedia states, a language is a system of arbitrary symbols and the rules used to manipulate them. Therefore a computer language is a system of arbitrary symbols and rules used to communicate with a computer.
You will therefore be needing some sort of method to 'write' and 'store' these symbols, and this is why you need a text editor. You will have come across numerous text editors, Microsoft Word, Notepad, Wordpad and emacs are all examples of them. Text editors are simple to use, you just open them up using the Microsoft Start menu, Command Prompt, or other method for non-Windows systems, type on your keyboard and then save the file.
However, the above programs all have their own way of 'storing' or 'saving' these text files, for example Microsoft Word uses the .doc file extension, and Notepad uses the .txt file extension, both of which act as a way of determining what type of file you are using.
Here is the thing: We want to use our own file extension. This is because gloss files have extension .gloss. This causes a problem with some of the well-known text editors because they don't know how to handle gloss files.
Therefore, I recommend you search out a Programming Text Editor, specially designed to give you the freedom you need to write your computer languages. These are easy to find, and it is well worth you finding the one that suits you best. The editor I recommend however, is jEdit. Not only is it simple and easy to use, but there is also a GlossLite 'plugin' in development for jEdit that makes the whole 'glossing' process easier.
Computers work in binary; sequences of 1's and 0's, and the code that a computer directly 'understands' is called machine code. The languages introduced above are all examples of high-level languages, and are so called because a computer cannot directly understand them, instead, they need to be converted into a lower-level language and this is called 'compiling'.
When writing in GLOSS however, you don't need to worry about compiling. Instead, a transformation is applied to the GLOSS language which converts it into another high-level langauge, which is processed later on in the computer. We will see more of how GLOSS works in the section: An Introduction to Gloss. An example of a language that needs compiling is C.
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