At 21:21 14.03.99 -0800, you wrote:

>What happened (is happening) with Self? Has anybody built a version of
>Squeak without classes? Would this be hard to do?

I'm interested in a class-less prototype based language based on Squeak.
Mainly to try to find some answers to your other questions :-) Right now, I
can't answer them.  I never used Self or other prototype-based languages,
but the more I think about them, the better I like them.  Actually,
whenever I have to define a class in Smalltalk, I wish I just could open an
inspector and add some more slots without worrying about meta classes and
sub classes and singleton patterns and constructor methods.

My idea is to build a class-less subsystem in Squeak - which the option to
eventually migrate everything. But for the first experiments, it's enough
to support true method delegation and a slightly different clone function
which respects the way Self handles map objects.  I already build a prove
of concept VM for both concepts (although separate) and I think, I'll give
it a try and create a new VM once I bought my new computer.

>Pity it only runs on Sun platforms; too rich for my blood.

Some guy is currently working on a Linux port of the original SELF system,
but that will not be easy and the guy has all my respect for that task.  He
probably started without knowing about the difficulties :-)

Check out http://www.egroups.com/list/self-interest/ for more info.


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust  //  ...and now something completely different