How about the idea that instead of translating the Squeak VM from Smalltalk to C, that it would be translated to Objective-C? Wouldn't it then be easier to write the VM in a a more natural style of Smalltalk? Is Objective-C standard enough to make this a feasible idea?
-Carl
On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, David Stes wrote:
On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, Steve Dekorte wrote:
Is anyone working on a Smalltalk to Objective-C interface? I don't mean code conversion, I mean a direct interface between running Smalltalk and Objective-C code.
My first impression was that it might be a good idea, but then later I was thinking that it is against the idea, both of Squeak and Objective-C.
For example, with the question on QuickTime-support that we had a while ago on this list, of making a "link" between Squeak and QuickTime, it was clear that the Squeak people feel, that having such external modules, is a bit against their philosophy of being able to access everything, from top to bottom, as Smalltalk code. (well, there was also a concern of portability, but that concern wouldn't apply in the ST<->OBJC case).
Anyhow, I certainly respect this feeling, and when you see how nice Squeak is, and how much they achieved, like how easy you can get Smalltalk from a different source, to work in Squeak (it would be difficult if you have external modules, I think).
Objective-C is, in its heart, runtime support for a Smalltalk -> C translator. It's better to just continue to do it like that, I think, (i.e. conversion) and make sure that we follow the standard that Squeak is setting.
David.
------------------------------------------------------------------ Carl Gundel carlg@world.std.com Shoptalk Systems 508-872-5315 author of Liberty BASIC, a 1996 PC Magazine Awards Finalist! http://world.std.com/~carlg/basic.html ------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, 28 Apr 1998, Carl E Gundel wrote:
How about the idea that instead of translating the Squeak VM from Smalltalk to C, that it would be translated to Objective-C? Wouldn't it then be easier to write the VM in a a more natural style of Smalltalk? Is Objective-C standard enough to make this a feasible idea?
Something like this was the idea of Producer, although, it's not really a mapping from the VM, it is a mapping from classes to their equivalents in OC.
This, then, depends on the classes in OC having to be almost in a one-to-one correspondence with those of ST.
Over the years, a lot of divergence happened, so that's why Squeak is so great, to me (I can't afford expensive ST's ...). Now it is much easier to have access to a ST and test how they do things.
I have converted the nroff Producer article to HTML, and have it at: http://www.can.nl/~stes/producer.html.
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