Folks -

For the most part, we anticipate the changes underlying Version 4 to be invisible to the average user.  However, one change has come up that extends into a number of adjacent areas, so I want at least to warn everyone of its coming.

The change is to replace our barnacled old ST-80 compiler with a shiny new SMACC-based compiler.  The decision to do so was originally motivated by the fact that Anthony's closure support, which will be a part of Version 4, is based on SMACC.  Then, when the topic came up for discussion on the VM-developers list, the move to SMACC was further endorsed because  the old compiler is such a mess, the Refactoring Browser already uses SMACC,and it is likely that any future compiler work (such as Marcus's parse tree experiments) will also be based on SMACC.

Marcus Denker has kindly offered to prepare a changeSet that introduces SMACC into the innards of Squeak without significant perturbation.  He has some other work to complete first, but it is likely that this change could be ready for test around Mid May.  We are requesting that this be brought into 3.8 alpha as soon as it seems reasonably solid (we'll announce when this is so).  Also, since Marcus has plenty of other things on his plate, it would be nice if other folks could help with testing of this change when it is ready, as it impinges on a number of sensitive adjacent areas such as decompilation, source code selection in the debugger, and the universal tiles used by the browser's view-as-tiles feature.

There will be a number of upsides to this move, not the least of which is the introduction of Anthony's closure support soon thereafter, with accompanying VM support to follow soon as well.

If anyone knows a reason why not to make this move, please speak now or forever hold your peace.

Thanks
	- Dan