[Vm-dev] Re: FFI syntax

[Andreas Raab]

On 3/25/2011 13:39, Torsten Bergmann wrote:
> David followed an approach in Smallscript/S# where you were
> able (beside the usual Smalltalk syntax) to also use
> a C-Style syntax with braces directly within Smalltalk.
>
>    User32::MessageBox(NULL,'Hello','World',0)
>
> was similar to
>
>    User32::MessageBox: NULL with: 'Hello' with: 'World' with: 0
>
> Both worked and was accepted by the parser, although the first one
> looked heretic to most Smalltalkers since you can mix C/Smalltalk
> syntax the way you like.

We did the same for the OpenGL bindings. The main idea was that 
transcribing OpenGL code from C to Croquet looked amazingly similar when 
cascading, i.e.,

     "draw a rectangle"
     ogl
         glVertex2f(0, 0);
         glVertex2f(1, 0);
         glVertex2f(1, 1);
         glVertex2f(0, 1).

Cheers,
   - Andreas

> So you just attached a DLL to a class
>
> Class name: OpenGLControl
>        extends: UIControl
>        dll: opengl32
>        fields: context
>
> and you could write:
>
>   onCustomDraw: facet
>      |hdc| := thread activeCanvas hDC.
>      ...
>      glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT).
>      glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES).
>      glColor3ub(255, 0, 0).
>      glVertex2i(0, 1).
>      ...
>
> This was open/more familiar to people coming from C/C++ background
> or when converting C examples to Smalltalk.
>
> Bye
> T.
>