[ANN] Slate 0.2 with introduction

Alexandre Bergel bergel at iam.unibe.ch
Sat Dec 6 09:36:25 UTC 2003


Hello Brian,

When I read your post, I rush myself to try out Slate. Unfortunately I get the following:
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
godfroy at darkside:~/Slate/slate$ uname -a
Linux darkside 2.4.19 #3 SMP Thu Jul 10 15:25:38 CEST 2003 i686 unknown
godfroy at darkside:~/Slate/slate$ ls
NEWS        compiler.lisp  etc            object.lisp  repl.lisp   src
README      compiler.o     license.txt    object.o     repl.o      x11.lisp
build.lisp  demo           no-cache.lisp  prims.lisp   slate
cache.lisp  doc            no-cache.o     prims.o      slate.lisp
godfroy at darkside:~/Slate/slate$ ./slate
;;; Warning: READ-SEQUENCE is being redefined.
;;; Warning: WRITE-SEQUENCE is being redefined.
Slate 1> (load "slate.lisp")
'./src/init.slate' fileIn.
Bad selector name in keyword method invocation on line 2: ./src/init.slate
Top level.
> The variable FILEIN. is unbound.
Broken at EVAL.
>>
godfroy at darkside:~/Slate/slate$
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Any hint?

Cheers,
Alexandre


On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 04:21:15PM -0800, Brian T Rice wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> This is my first release announcement of Slate on this mailing list,
> although I've alluded to it many times and discussed it individually with
> quite a few Squeak users. I've been hesitant to announce it since
> Squeakers have high standards when it comes to an environment, especially
> for something like Slate which aims to be a lot like Squeak, even if only
> by learning lessons from it.
> 
> So, here's the short of it:
> 
> Slate is a "clean slate" Smalltalk; the purpose of it is to provide the
> most powerful and yet simple language that can possibly be easily
> recognized as Smalltalk-compatible. So, Slate includes prototype-based
> object programming, using multiple arguments to define a method's
> signature, instead of just the first. We currently use Self's delegation
> slots for inheritance, although at some point in the future we will
> provide something more class-friendly, after having learned how the mix of
> mechanisms best works.
> 
> And then, there are the really powerful libraries we've been building with
> it over the last year and a half. Craig Latta's Flow framework is included
> and even extended in Slate, the collections are quite enhanced themselves,
> with much the same ideas as in the Traits project, the exceptions are
> enhanced to have object-oriented restarts (handlers), and many many other
> small details that accumulated sometimes without planning into a new
> powerful possibility.
> 
> We have some interesting new language experiments which may interest
> people here, such as subjective programming (somewhat similar to PIE and
> other related ideas) and optional keyword arguments or positional
> arguments (done without C-style syntax). There is also a syntactic
> abstraction support built in to the language, which seems on first glance
> to be contradictory to the Smalltalk way of doing things, but actually
> makes good sense when you take the time to understand it.
> 
> With all that said, Slate is not ready for prime-time, being written in
> Lisp (with an inlining compiler, but still), and not having the full kind
> of access you get with a dedicated VM. 0.2 to 0.3 will consist of shifting
> to a Squeak-style VM implementation, although my dialect for the
> C-translation is a lot easier to work in, I believe.
> 
> The upside is that we've taken great care to document everything in a
> reference manual and add comments to nearly every method and area of
> definition. This is of course necessary in any new work, but we're
> particularly keen on ensuring that there's no mystery in the system.
> 
> Slate's environment right now consists of a command-line semi-compiler, a
> debugger, inspector, and Emacs interaction mode with source highlighting.
> Slate images can be saved and restored transparently through the host Lisp
> system. There is a graphical system whose bare functions may be tested if
> one is handy with Lisp, but otherwise it is not for use until 0.3 or 0.4
> fully support it.
> 
> Slate's website is http://slate.tunes.org/ , and the 0.2 release is
> announced there and available under the Downloads section. Slate is
> MIT-licensed, and whenever we patterned some source after another's
> library, we cited them in the comments; all such libraries were similarly
> freely available.
> 
> Feel free to ask questions, but I am not going to make any stance on
> policy about Slate vs. Squeak, except that I personally consider it more
> worthwhile to develop the largest-scale improvements to Squeak in Slate.
> 
> PS: This obviously is a lot of information to digest. There is quite a
> set of materials for learning the basics on the site, and the reference
> manual is meticulously updated by yours truly, so make good use of them.
> :)
> 
> -- 
> Brian T. Rice
> LOGOS Research and Development
> http://tunes.org/~water/

-- 
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Alexandre Bergel  http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~bergel
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