Using Squeak for general desktop development

goran.krampe at bluefish.se goran.krampe at bluefish.se
Tue Feb 10 12:46:56 UTC 2004


Hi!

Mike Flippin <webmaster at blindmindseye.com> wrote:
> So basically your goal with the GTK bindings is to provide the ability 
> to make a Smalltalk GUI app outside of the Squeak environment? I've been 

Yes. The Gtk windows come up all on their own. The image with its window
is running alongside, but since we of course can run Squeak headless you
get a "normal" Gtk app.

> reading some bits and pieces about how Squeak was written and am 
> wondering how hard it would be to make the Squeak VM behave similar to a 
> typical VM so that you could run on the commandline say..... "Squeak 
> myApp.st" to run your GTK/Squeak apps. Providing both the standard 

No need to drop the image concept just to being able to run Gtk apps!

Btw, you can already start a Squeak with a commandline like the above -
but it will first read an image of course and then read in the .st file.
But having code in .st files is just... no point.

The only thing I use that for is to supply some easily edited startup
info - sort of like an .ini file, for my server headless apps.

> Squeak UI and that ability would seem to me to be the best way to make 
> Squeak popular and accessible to those of us more familiar with 
> languages like Java, C and Python and their respective environments.

Well, as many here have said - it is a "double edged sword". Squeak has
so much much cooler stuff to offer in Morhpic etc. I don't want to "dumb
it down" to simple business apps. BUT... I also want people to have the
opportunity. :)

IMHO newbies should start with Squeak and Morphic to learn how cool,
soft, easy  and interactive such environments can be.

> Have you checked up on the work already done by the GNU team on 
> Smalltalk/GTK?

No. There is probably a vast difference in how you connect GST with
C-code compared to Squeak.
But I might take a look. Note that I am taking a KISS approach here - it
will not be a fullblown binding I think, definitely not from the start.

I am instead focusing on using libglade and enough API to be able to
hook up signals etc. I will try to put together some
developer-wanna-see-my-broken-code-thatis-useless?-release later this
week.

regards, Göran



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