Squeak's role in a larger world?

Tim Rowledge rowledge at interval.com
Fri Oct 1 17:25:54 UTC 1999


> Squeak is already extendable, via C/C++.  Should it be 
> extendable by other compiled languages?
Any language that can be used to make the platform-appropriate form of DLL can
be used to extend squeak. If your platform can make a DLL from BASIC, squeak
can call it.

>  Could Squeak be extended via other interpreted 
> languages?  What support would be needed in the class 
> libraries to make Squeak's existing extendability more 
> general?
If there are defined, comprehensible APIs by which one can talk to these other
systems, then squeak could use such APIs.
> 
> AFAIK, Squeak is not yet embeddable.
Not in the sense of being able to put an image in rom and run out of rom, no. I
_think_ it is possible, but it would be easier to do with an OT based system.

> What would be needed to 
> make Squeak available to another language system?
That seems the trickier one to me. Calling _in_ to squeak always seems to be a
harder thing to think about than simply calling out from squeak. Consider the
following:-
call out to some dll, which involves a callback to some function. The function
is actually a wrapper that calls back into squeak. An error occurs in the
squeak side of the call back. What happens? What if the callback has to be
completed before the callout can complete and the callout was intended to get
an OS event in order to..... etc. It can get painful.  

tim 

-- 
Useful random insult:- Hypnotized as a child and couldn't be woken.
Tim Rowledge:  rowledge at interval.com (w)  +1 (650) 842-6110 (w)
 tim at sumeru.stanford.edu (h)  <http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim>





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