more than GUI?

Aaron J Reichow reic0024 at d.umn.edu
Tue Sep 12 03:54:01 UTC 2000


On Tue, 12 Sep 2000, pu tizi wrote:

> Gentlemen:

There may be lades on this list as well...

> Yes, Squeak is a cool system to all platforms. But will that prevents
> us from extend its usage into some wonderful new area? I mean we might
> someday make the full out of it ON some SPECIAL OS platform, just once,
> to see something interesting that would happen:
> Who would be so kind to make a SmallTalkSHell(STSH) for, let's say,
> the Linux or BSD system just using Squeak? That will yield us:
>
> 2.We will change the whole filesystem into a somekind of object oriented
> look, an objectsystem, you may call it and

I was actually considering something like this, whilst thinking about an
object oriented operating system.  As I would see it, when you'd first run
stsh, it'd start out a server image, and some small C program would
connect to this server.  The server image would control all local stsh
sessions, and would essentially be an object database.  There's also the
possibility, that in this small client (whether it's in C, Smalltalk or
anything else) could connect to remote stsh server images.

Perhaps even file management operations would be managed in a
Smalltalk-like syntax, z.b.-

stsh$ funky.txt cp: /mnt/floppy
stsh$ moo.ps mv: ~/docs
stsh$ .stshrc rm

But at the same time, a user could choose to use the normal UNIX commands.
If the leftmost token is not the name of an object in the system, then
search the path for a command of that name, and pass it the parameters
that followed it.  If not, spit out an error.  

> 4.cd to some object as if a directory then talk to it and
> 5.reuse the whole GNU/Linux in an odd way, for example:
> 	$ cd Object
> 	$ ls 
> 	while $ implies Smalltalk now, and

That would, in a sense, violate fundementals of OO (encapsulation), but be
interesting.  A user could be able to store objects as files (serialized
to a file, but instantiated within stsh when the user is running a
shell, probably persistently).  

> 9.we, perhaps, could make it possible that other langues might feel it
> 	more comfortabl and easier to run in our Shell environment! :=(

Perhaps you should check out GNU Smalltalk- more unixy, command line input
and all.  A stsh would probably be easier to do in GNU Smalltalk anyway.

So many great ideas... I wonder if this stuff is good for various graduate
degrees, got to start thinking, even though I'm only a sophmore. ;)

Aaron





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