On Tue 15 Dec, Stephen Pair wrote:
> Excellent point!  One of Smalltalk's many benefits is its ability to
> effectively deal with complexity.  Why not leverage the power of Smalltalk
> to help deal with the complexities of the very platform on which it runs?
> This stuff should not be in the VM, but rather in Smalltalk.  The VM should
> provide a basic object engine, and very basic call in and call out protocols
> for interacting with the host environment.  Then, things such as the Win32
> or X Windows APIs could modeled in Smalltalk, and effectively wrappered.
> Platform independence could be achieved 100% in Smalltalk (with full access
> to platform specifics) with all of the abstractions completely accessible.
> This of course opens up the possibility of crashes, but it also buys you a
> great deal of power.
>
Sounds like you've just re-engineered the justification for the'Van Gogh'
project that ParcPlace did, nearly finished and then lost in the
merger/layoff/shakeup/near-crash a few years ago. Most of it worked pretty
well... we had it almost done on windows, close on Mac, getting there on OS/2
and making reasonable progress on X.

tim

-- 
IBM: Idiots Being Mental
Tim Rowledge:  rowledge at interval.com (w)  +1 (650) 842-6110 (w)
 tim at sumeru.stanford.edu (h)  <http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim>