JArchibald at aol.com wrote:
> 
> Alan,
> 
> Do you know of other descriptions of the Smalltalk language distinct from the
> fourth section of the Blue Book? For example, has anyone done a formal
> description of Smalltalk for a doctoral thesis, or some such?
> 
> Jerry.
> 
> (Re cc: I was in process of sending this mail to Alan, when I realized that
> others may also have useful reponses to this question.)

How formal does this have to be- have you seen the August 1981 ( 81, not 91 )
issue of Byte magezine?  That issue was almost entirely about Smalltalk, and
had many highly informative articles in it that were meant to introduce the
world to the then new concepts of Smalltalk.  There was a later issue devoted
to Object-Oriented programming which again had a few shorter articles about
Smalltalk in it- I believe that was in 1986, perhaps also August.

Perhaps a better question is what do you have in mind to cover in your description?
The language is trivial, almost to the point of being descriptionless.  The
environment is certainly not, the implications of it being a dynamic system rather
than static are certainly of interest, but what is it that you are getting at?

What does it mean to truly do OBJECTS?
What does it mean to be truly DYNAMIC?
What does it mean to be truly REFLECTIVE?

Why must these and other things come together before you have Smalltalk?
Why does it cease to be Smalltalk when these things are absent?  WHAT
is the VIRTUALITY of SMALLTALK?  WHAT should it BE?

Those are the sorts of questions I'd ask.

les