On 2 Feb 2002, Cees de Groot wrote:

>
> Think of translating SqueakToys. Where do you stop? SqueakToys, IMHO, is an
> onion skin which you can slowly peel of layer by layer to get exposed to
> Smalltalk lurking below. Somewhere, you have to make a decision about what's
> translatable 'data' ("Go" as a label on a button) and what's untranslatable
> 'code' (ifTrue:ifFalse - now, are we going to translate that with
> indienWaar:indienNietwaar: or wennWahr:wennNichtwahr: ?).
>

Keep in mind the limits on method dictionaries. There's the 'soft' limit
of 2000 selectors/class, and the 'firm' limit of 4000 methods/class.

The exact formulas are:

For 2000<n<4000, the performance scales as
     1+2000/(4096-n)
And for n>4000, its scales as
     n/2

Note that the typical performance is '2'. With an image rebuild using the
new identityHash on methodictionaries, both of these can be turned into

  for n>2000,
    1+n/2000


--

So, do keep these in mind, if you're thinking of translating 'Morph' into
several languages.


Scott