Hi all,

 

PDFtalk is a PDF library for VisualWorks[1]. The library has been ported
successfully to Gemstone[2].

Now, there is interest from companies in a port to Squeak and VA Smalltalk.

 

The project[3] has started and we are making good progress. 

The first step: porting the Values package.

This is easy, because there are no namespace issues.

 

The next step is to implement class renamings so that namespaced classes can
be renamed to global prefixed names.

 

Then PDFtalk with all its components, except for the UI, can be ported.

 

The porting approach is different to the traditional way of loading and
fixing.

The import files for other Smalltalks are generated from VisualWorks where
the code is transformed by declarative rules.

The approach is documented in [4].

 

I set up a GitHub organization for this project[5]. There, the fileouts for
each dialect are published (Gemstone, Squeak and VA Smalltalk so far), so
that people without VisualWorks can work with the code in their Smalltalk.

 

Also, I record and explain all steps of the porting process for Squeak in
great detail[6], so that people can follow it.

 

I would like to invite Smalltalkers from all dialects to take part in this
project.

The code transformations for Squeak will be quite similar to the ones needed
for Pharo and Cuis.

Therefore, each port to one Smalltalk will help the port to other
Smalltalks.

 

Any takers?

 

Happy hacking,

                Christian

 

 

[1] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=start

[2] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=pdftalk4gemstone

[3] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=pdftalknonnamespacefileout

[4] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=smalltalktransform

[5] https://github.com/PortingPDFtalk

[6] https://wiki.pdftalk.de/doku.php?id=valuesportinglog

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20220301/17ec97ff/attachment.html>