Mats --

You will be interested to learn that the very first version of Smalltalk
(-72) had a completely extensible syntax (in fact the writing of a class
also automatically supplied the grammar). This worked very well, except ...
that too much freedom here leads to a Tower of Babel as far as other users
are concerned. This has also been the experience with the few other really
good extensible languages (like Ned Iron's IMP).
     Extreme extensibility was removed in the next major design of
Smalltalk (-76) in favor of a syntax that could read by anyone, regardless
of how many classes had been defined ... I.e., getting stronger meanings
turned out to be more important in the end than making language structures
fit the task.
    That being said, I think this process went too far with Smalltalk-80,
and needs more experimentation for the next generation, most of whom will
be "occasional scriptors", and who need more readable (especially
"gistable") code.

Cheers,

Alan

---------

At 5:50 AM -0800 1/15/00, Mats Nygren wrote:
>Hello,
>
>Question:
>  What is the precise syntax for fileIn/fileOut? Especially the !-stuff
>  puzzles me. Is this described somewhere?
>
>My current concern with this is for producing things that can be filedIn,
>and also receiving fileOuts for processing outside of squeak.
>
>In time when I get better acquainted with squeak/Smalltalk I will make
>squeak-versions of this.
>
>Other (related) stuff:
>
>In case you are interested I'm working with programming language syntaxes.
>I have separated syntactic processing from semantic (that is execution)
>and the same execution mekanisms can be reached by different syntaxes. For
>example C/C++/Java; Pascal/Modula/etc; Scheme; Squeak (and soon, just
>for fun, Algol, Simula; Fortran maybe even Cobol) Beta etc. You get the
>idea. This is user-extensible of course. Besides being able to read those
>it can alse write it making superficial translations at the syntactic
>level.
>
>This is also coordinated with a graphic (in this case syntax-)tree editor.
>Some of this could fit in with youre vision of graphical programming I
>believe.
>
>I tempt you with this: if a thing similar to this are made part of the
>squeak system, it is possible to change syntax at a snap. The code can
>appear in any of the syntaxes that are defined.
>
>It should also be possible
>to bridge the gap between Smalltalk and the Players scripting system you
>are developing.
>
>I also have som ideas of my own when it comes to user scripting, I'll keep
>you posted when I have described it. The main idea is about the history of
>changes.
>
>There are several complications of course, however I have found that they
>can often be solved or else avoided by conventions.
>
>At the present time I have no good description of this, however if someone
>is interested let me know. My aim is to work with this for a while.
>
>Keep up the good work!
>
>/Mats Nygren, SICS