Hello Igor,


IS> I think it would be MUCH easier to write a .dll which communicating
IS> with squeak vm using sockets instead of rewriting squeak VM to be
IS> compiled as dll.

yeah, you'd have to plug a simple dll into the CAD which transfers all
input it receives from the socket to the CAD's command line and in the
other direction offers a function in the CAD to send some data (maybe
only strings) out through the socket.

Plus a few functions in the CAD to set up the socket. No changes in
Squeak at all. That's all you need as long as you don't need a very
dynamic access with the CAD.

But:
With AutoCAD they have made dll's incompatible, called it arx and have
you sign some ugly license to use the SDK.

Our application supports AutoCAD + LT from 2000 to 2009 (soon) and
could have one version of the lisp code (no version specific code).

For the C code, we have to keep around several compilers and a lot of
ifdef's in the C code. 2010 will bring us the next C version.

Even for the small dll as described above that will be a lot of work
and one point of the SDK license is to not make the program available
under LT or other CAD platforms.


Cheers,

Herbert