FW: [Seaside] Ports of Seaside - are there useful modules

[Jeffrey Odell]

Still considering a port to Dolphin Smalltalk.  Given the answer below,
does it make sense that, until we have continuations (which I think
there is a reasonable chance of getting OA to do eventually), we can
implement the callPage: concept by having each IAPage save it's state in
an "page specific" manner, as well as it's place in the page call stack?

In other words, isn't a continuation just a low level, admittedly very
cool, way of:
- saving the state of the component, 
- saving it's place in the call-return list of components?

Couldn't that be implemented a different way? Potentially, could it be
more lightweight that continuations and have applicability even in the
presence of continuations?

Just musing - 

jlo 

-----Original Message-----
From: seaside-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org
[mailto:seaside-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Avi
Bryant
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 7:47 PM
To: Jeffrey Odell
Cc: seaside@lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [Seaside] Ports of Seaside - are there useful modules


On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Jeffrey Odell wrote:

> It seems that the unique session management concept of Seaside depends

> on continuations.  If your favorite Smalltalk doesn't have them, 
> porting is inhibited.
>
> Having said that, how modular is Seaside?  Are there other subsystems 
> of Seaside worth porting to other Smalltalks that are useful on their 
> own right?  Or is the essential value lost without continuations?

Well, Seaside is roughly based on the design of WebObjects, which
doesn't use continuations; the templates and bindings system, the
subcomponent model, the basic session management, etc, would all work
without them: basically you would have to lose the callPage: primitive,
but you'd still have jumpToPage:, and you can do a lot with that.  It's
still a lot nicer than, say, SSP.

However, I'd say that continuations make up about half of the advantage
of Seaside; that is, Seaside + continuations is, IMHO, about as much
nicer to work in than WebObjects, as WebObjects is nicer to work in than
JSP & co.  So there'd have to be a pretty compelling reason for me to
work in a Smalltalk without them - the choice of Squeak or VW meets my
needs pretty well.

Does anyone know if continuations can be implemented in VisualAge,
anyway? I believe it has thisContext and #swapSender:, does it not? I
can post a small TestCase for them if anyone wants to try.

Cheers,
Avi

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