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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Background: In about 1989 I created a version
of Tim Budd's little smalltalk that promoted the entire Object space/VM and all
it contained to a first class Smalltalk object. I modified it to
support message passing between VMs by allowing messages to be serialized.
Eventually (about 1991 before Java and OLE) I abandoned this and
rolled my own C-based version for Mac, PC, VMS and Unix (Sun & SCO)
that allowed serialized message passing via TCP. We did this for a kind of
object-based ODBC (Oracle, Informix) we called DataStreams which we sold as a
product. DataStreams had abstract (but by this time no longer smalltalk)
objects for databases, records, fields, transactions, etc.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I (<A
href="http://www.think121.com">www.think121.com</A>) am currently looking to
bring the same kind of object-based database access to the graphic arts
world. We build commercial (yes, I'm sure that's offensive to some,
but I have 4 kids to feed) software for high-speed manipulation of PDF files
under database control. The software (C++) runs on multiple platforms (PC,
OS X, Mac, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX), but is currently a simple .EXE and Acrobat
plug-in. We have OEM's and customers world-wide. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I am looking to transform something like
Squeak into a simple, vendor-neutral database access layer, a unified,
cross-platform UI, and a weapons-grade deployment platform to plug our products
into. We probably would, at most, only want to sell support for the Squeak
components.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Arial size=2>Over the last n years I
have rejected Java (as lame and slow) and lisp as requiring too much effort to
port the compiler, etc. Most other stuff is either under some form of GPL (GNU
Smalltalk) or is just not real (for example, a squeak XML parser appears to be
about as fast as our C++ parser on large 3Mb+ XML files; files which most
Java and Microsoft tools can't even open.) </FONT>Though I am new to
Squeak, it so far looks like an extremely robust platform that is
also business friendly. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I have some serious questions...</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>1) Are there many other commercially sold
(non-smalltalk-programming) apps using Squeak as a base? </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>2) It looks like there is no good way to access a
database from Squeak (probably ODBC). Is this true? I am also
interested in integrating database access into a Wiki. I thought I saw
something about Squeak and MySQL, but I couldn't find it.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>3) I am interested in creating a mechanism
(that remains legally open like Squeak) to allow integrating GhostScript
output into Squeak (.PS/.PDF -> Morphic bitmaps). Does anyone else
care?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>4) It looks like the Squeak license would require
us to turn over all classes we created back to squeak.org, which is okay.
We would probably deploy our proprietary software components as VM
plug-ins. Are there any other such commercial plug-ins? It looks
like this plug-in approach would not violate the license???</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>5) Does Squeak support real-time, network-based
message passing between running Squeaks?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>6) What's the best documentation for Squeak (if
any)?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Thanks</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Comments, flames and death threats to the list or
</FONT><FONT face=Arial size=2><A
href="mailto:todd@think121.com">todd@think121.com</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></BODY></HTML>