<Bruce Badger> Alan,
If you are going to be at Smalltalk Solutions this year perhaps we can talk about Smalltalk portability. My hope is that libraries such as Passport and Sport melt away as the ANSI standard moves to cover more areas so every year I lobby the Cincoms and GemStones of the world to re-engage in the ANSI process every year - but if we could harangue them together, that would be good :-) </Bruce Badger>
I'd really like to attend, but that's just not going to be possible this year.
I'd also really like to talk with you about inter-Smalltalk portability. Although I generally prefer VW personally, I also strongly believe that multiple, different Smalltalk implementations (including both commercial and open-source platforms) are necessary to the success of Smalltalk. I also believe that Smalltalk is not in a position where it can afford the luxury of any significant disunity. United we stand, divided we fall.
Standards, and avoiding unnecessary differences in APIs, or in underlying computational models, are key components of having a unified Smalltalk community. So is respect for prior art. And in that vein, I'd like to also mention Chris Uppal's "Common Smalltalk" project: http://commonsmalltalk.wikispaces.com/
I do wonder whether an ANSI-governed effort at Smalltalk standardization is the right approach, though. Although I was overall quite pleased with the work of the ANSI X3J20 Smalltalk committee (a former co-worker of mine, Doug Surber, was on that committee--and he was responsible for the DateAndTime and Duration protocols, interestingly enough,) I was not at all impressed by the response of the Smalltalk vendors/implementors to the ANSI Standard. To this day, VW still fails to conform to the ANSI Standard in ways for which there is no good excuse (e.g., try evaluating "$a codePoint" in a "virgin" VW image--and that is just one example among many--although to be fair, the X3J20 committee did not respect prior art in some cases--and Character>>codePoint is a case in point.)
And then there's the amount of time it takes to get a new ANSI Standard finalized. Perhaps a private group of "concerned citizens" could get things done more quickly. "If you want something done, do it yourself."
Is it possible that a small group of those with the necessary skills, time, interest and commitment could define **and implement** a standard Smalltalk library for most Smalltalk platforms? Can we "just do it" in the hope that "build it and they will come" is more than just a catchy phrase?
--Alan