2008/7/1 tim Rowledge tim@rowledge.org:
On 30-Jun-08, at 6:02 PM, Michael van der Gulik wrote:
On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 6:34 AM, tim Rowledge tim@rowledge.org wrote: I am trying to make time to post a few articles on some future directions I consider interesting for the core system.
First one is up at http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/89.html - do please comment on the relevant page, or even here.
Does every numbered prim also have a name or named equivalent?
It's just a prim, ie a function somewhere.
I'm proposing that we name all those prims that are currently numbered - primitive 1 would become "primitiveAdd" in a similar manner to say "primitiveDisablePowerManager". This would allow all prims to be built as plugin components, thereby allowing on the fly replacement of those plugins (making due allowance for handling retained state etc, of course). (It's sometihng I've been wanting to see done since 1988; I had discussions with Alan Schiffman & Peter Deutsch about it way before I even move to ParcPlace). We would lose the primitive table, saving a 8 kb or so. Oh and the *really* obsoleteIndexPrimitiveTable, saving another 8Kb or so.
err... a primitive names, will add about same or even more space (in fact it will make VM and image both little bigger ). So its unlikely that new VM will have less memory footprint, but more likely that it would be simplified a bit comparing to old ways how it works with primitives.
Some code gets simplified, some space is saved, some flexibility is added, some bits are freed up in the CM header. THe downside is someone has to do some work.
tim
tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Advanced design: Upper management doesn't understand it.