On Fri, Jan 28, 2000 at 06:58:04PM -0800, Jake Hamby wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Jan 2000, Michael Rueger wrote:
> 
> > Most of what you are describing is already realized in SmalltalkX.
> > Have a look at
> > http://www.exept.de/
> 
> I keep seeing mentions to Smalltalk/X on this list, especially their
> integrated Smalltalk/Java approach.  Thanks for the link:  I'll definitely
> have to download it and see what it's capable of. 

ST/X is *really* worth a look. It's a very interesting system.
Besides Java it has a very good C integration. You can simply write C-code
in a normal Smalltalk method, e.g. (from the documentation):

myMethodReturningOne
    %{
        /* return a SmallInteger */
        RETURN ( __MKSMALLINT(1) );   
    %}


or:

 mySpecialTrigMethod:arg
    %{
        if (__isFloat(arg)) {
            /* compute a Float */

            double fVal = __floatVal(arg);
            RETURN ( __MKFLOAT(sin(exp(fVal) * 1.2345)) );
        }
    %}


it is even possible to mix Smalltalk and C:

 anotherMethodReturningOne
        |retVal|

    %{
        /* return a SmallInteger */
        retVal = __MKSMALLINT(1);   
    %}.
        ^ retVal


When such a method is accepted, the Browser automagically calls  the
Smalltalk-to-C translator, the C-compiler and the linker. Then the DLL is
loaded into the VM. This whole procedure does not take much longer than
accepting a Smalltalk method. Wow! 

ST/X doesn't have primitives. In Squeak, ProtoObject>>== looks like this:

== anObject 

        <primitive: 110>
        self primitiveFailed
 

ST/X:

== anObject

%{  /* NOCONTEXT */

    RETURN ( (self == anObject) ? true : false );
%}

Changing a primitive in Squeak requires a recompilation of the whole
VM, in ST/X you change it, accept, and that's it. (#== is a bad example, 
it's compiled inline in both systems).

 Marcus

--
Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de phone at home:(0721)614235 @work:(0721)608-2749