> I am not sure whether this concept fits in with the [much] earlier
> discussion about calling out of or into Smalltalk, or how it compares with
> pluggable entities, since I am new to Squeak, but it would be an excellent
> way of "grafting" functionality into Squeak before completing its native
> implementation.  I also do not know how much surgery would have to be
> performed on ObjectMemory in order to accomplish it.  It just looks like
> a good idea we can borrow if it hasn't been patented.

Do you mean taking stuff from QKS and porting it to Squeak?  I don't think a
Squeak implementation of a call-in call-out mechanism is that far off.
Also, one would probably be required to purchase QKS in order to get that
functionality.  There are really two components involved in a generic
call-in call-out mechanism:  1) the marshalling (which you have described
the QKS solution) and 2) the thunking.  I believe that both should be
independent and very pluggable.

Also, I think the same functionality can be achieved without changing the
structure of ObjectMemory in any way.  I'm not familiar with the QKS
implementation, but embedding raw binary formats in any object seems a bit
extreme.

- Stephen