A group of us are working on this (see my email from a few weeks ago), initially by trying to help Christian develop the code transformation tool he developed (see https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=smalltalktransform) so it can handle the PDFTalk code base. The hope is to make it practical to develop in any dialect and have transform settings that can produce workable code for any other. I'm hoping that one day it will be possible to run it through itself, then run the transformed version on the target and transform itself back to the original and have a perfect match.

Currently we tend to meet on Zoom each Wednesday at 11am PST (19:00 GMT I think), which fits after the Squeak board meetings. If you want to join in, please email so I can send out a zoom invite.

> On 2022-02-01, at 10:31 AM, Christian Haider <mail at christianhaider.de> wrote:
> 
> Hi Lou,
> 
> it would be great if Instantiations would support this effort! Great that you are bugging them!
> 
> About the fileOut tool, called FileOut30, in VW. It will create a fileOut which probably can be filed into VAST. From there on you need to work in VAST to fix all the differences to the source Smalltalk, especially renamings for namespaced classes. This is the traditional, but, imho, wrong approach. The process is brittle and the result is not predictable - it is not repeatable. What if a new version must be ported? All the changes have to be redone (with minor changes). Look at the effort to port Seaside or Glorp.
> 
> Better is to have a detailed description of what needs to be ported and how code needs to be transformed. This is repeatable and a new version with minor changes will result in minor changes to the code transformation. The transformations from one project could even be reused by other projects.
> 
> Happy hacking,
> 	Christian
> 
> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Squeak-dev <squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org> Im Auftrag von Louis LaBrunda
> Gesendet: Dienstag, 1. Februar 2022 18:22
> An: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Betreff: [squeak-dev] [vwnc] [PDFtalk] Porting the library to non-namespace Smalltalks
> 
> Hi Eliot & Christian,
> 
> I'm interested in helping with a port to VA Smalltalk.  I can't speak for Instantiations but I think they would be interested too.  I would prefer to let someone there take the lead and I would help where I can.  I have worked on a VA Smalltalk API for USB and the Raspberry Pi, so I have some experience with this kind of thing.  I emailed them but haven't yet heard back, that is a little unusual but they are in the midst of releasing a new version, so I hope they will get back to me soon.
> 
> I understand that there is a VW tool that can output code for VA Smalltalk but I don't have access to it.  I'm hoping Instantiations does.
> 
> Lou
> 
> On Tue, 1 Feb 2022 08:18:32 -0800, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> _,,,^..^,,,_ (phone)
>> 
>> Begin forwarded message:
>> 
>>> From: Christian Haider <christian.haider at smalltalked-visuals.com>
>>> Date: February 1, 2022 at 1:44:59 AM PST
>>> To: vwnc at lists.cs.illinois.edu
>>> Subject: [vwnc] [PDFtalk] Porting the library to non-namespace 
>>> Smalltalks
>>> Reply-To: christian.haider at smalltalked-visuals.com
>>> 
>>> ?
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> a new project started to port the PDF library PDFtalk [1] to Smalltalk dialects without namespaces.
>>> 
>>> There has been some interest in the past for such a port. Unfortunately, after the first excitement, I never heard of these attempts anymore, so that I think that they were abandoned. It would be interesting to hear why.
>>> 
>>> If there is still interest in getting PDFtalk into your Smalltalk, here is the chance to help and participate. I will try to do the port in the open and document everything on the wiki [1], so that lurkers can follow and helpers can comment.
>>> 
>>> A project page has been set up [2] and I started a log [3] where I record in detail what I am doing for porting the Values package.
>>> 
>>> The port is done with code transformations generating the source for the target dialect. You can find some documentation about the approach here [4].
>>> 
>>> All these pages need work, so comments will be appreciated.
>>> 
>>> Happy hacking,
>>>                Christian
>>> 
>>> 
>>> [1] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=start
>>> [2] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=pdftalknonnamespacefileout
>>> [3] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=valuesportinglog
>>> [4] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=smalltalktransform
> --
> Louis LaBrunda
> Keystone Software Corp.
> SkypeMe callto://PhotonDemon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
suido: a linux command that runs the following command as super user and then kills the parent process