Hi Bijan and Stephane (and others),

Well, I do have the beginnings of a little StarLogo system in Squeak.

It's pretty raw--basically just a sketch of some of the key ideas taken
directly from Mitch Resnick's book. I hesitate to put it out to the
entire Squeak list in its current form, but I'd be happy to turn over what
I have to some StarLogo enthusiast who'd like to take it over.

I got enough of the StarLogo ideas working to implement the slime mold
example, and it is quite beautiful. The system needs additional work to
allow patches to sense their neighbors; once this is done, I think
all the examples in Mitch's book could be implemented.

The system runs reasonably fast on current desktop and laptop computers
with one exception--the "diffuse" function (used to diffuse pheremones)
really wants to be a primitive.

The structuring ideas I had in mind are not at all obvious from what is
there. In the existing examples, I generated subclasses of StarLogoWorld
and StarLogoTurtle to hold the methods for a particular world. My
hope was to generate these subclasses automatically in some StarLogo
authoring environment. Another less-than-obvious thing is that the
the patch methods are actually methods of a StarLogoWorld, rather than
to patch objects. Again, this is an implmentation detail I hoped to
hide from the end user of the system.

You guys may have already gotten farther than me on your own. But if you'd
like to have my code as a starting point or just for ideas, let me
know. I'm going to be traveling this summer and would be happy to see
someone enthusiastic get some value out of this code.

If anyone would like to take over the code, let me know. If not, (or
perhaps in any case), I'll send it to Mark to put up on the Swiki
as a "work in progress".

	-- John

P.S. To answer Carl Gundel's orginal question, this StarLogo is not
really a Logo in Squeak since (a) StarLogo is really its own set of
ideas, distinct from Logo and (b) the thing I did is an exploration of
these ideas without any attempt to use Logo's syntax. If you were
looking for a Logo parser, you won't find it here. On the other hand,
you can do lots of the Logo examples in Squeak syntax by sending
messages to Pen. Or, bettery, you can use the EToy scripting system
to write Logo-like programs.

Re:
>>Date: Mon, 8 May 2000 17:10:28 -0400 (EDT)
>>From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu>
>>To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
>>Subject: Re: Logo in Smalltalk
>>
>>I'd love to have it out there!
>>
>>I started a very simple starlogo a while back before getting wind of
>>John's. I then decided to apply my "let Squeak Central do it" principle ;)
>>
>>I think the number of queries indicates that there's a good bit of
>>interest on the Squeak list.
>>
>>If you read my article on JavaStarLogo, you'll know that I'm a big fan and
>>would *love* to have a Squeak version.
>>
>>(Both the Macintosh Common Lisp, and the Java version have significant
>>rough spots, IMHO. I suspect that a Squeak version could easily blow them
>>out of the water. Also, a object/message syntax, or tile based syntax
>>would be *very* interesting! When tinkering with StarLogo, I've often
>>longed to be able to pop up an inspector on a patch, or on a turtle.)
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Bijan Parsia.
>>
>>On Mon, 8 May 2000, Alan Kay wrote:
>>
>>> We have loved the StarLogo approach to "particle systems" since Mitchel
>>> Reznick built the first one at MIT. One of our plans is to be able to offer
>>> similar (but not necessarily identical) features in Squeak. John made a
>>> first pass at this with StarLogoWorld, and we will offer further versions
>>> occasionally as they get built. There are no deadlines in the current plans.
>>>      If you and others on the Squeak list are interested, we could have
>>> John put out what's working now, and perhaps our terrific Open Source
>>> community can make some progress while we are occupied with our current
>>> goals.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Alan
>>>
>>> ---------
>>>
>>> At 10:31 AM -0800 5/8/00, Bijan Parsia wrote:
>>> >Oh no! I sent Stephane to the *wrong location* again!
>>> >
>>> >Er...since I've unwittingly draw your eye, *is* there a word about
>>> >StarLogoWorld that can be shared at this time?
>>> >
>>> >Cheers,
>>> >Bijan Parsia.
>>> >
>>> >On Mon, 8 May 2000, Alan Kay wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> John Maloney doesn't have an office ...... (nor does he want one ...).
>>> >>
>>> >> Cheers,
>>> >>
>>> >> Alan
>>> >>
>>> >> -----
>>> >>
>>> >> At 10:05 AM -0800 5/8/00, Bijan Parsia wrote:
>>> >> >On Mon, 8 May 2000, Stephane Ducasse wrote:
>>> >> >
>>> >> >> I'm really interested into StarLogo
>>> >> >>
>>> >> >> But could not find it at the location you mentionned
>>> >> >
>>> >> >Sorry, didn't mean to imply that it was. The description is there. The
>>> >> >code is, as far as I know, unreleased.
>>> >> >
>>> >> >> Could you send me the ritgh location
>>> >> >
>>> >> >Go to Squeak Central. Find John Maloney's office. Break in. Find his
>>> >> >computer. Look for a project called "StarLogoWorld" :)
>>> >> >
>>> >> >Cheers,
>>> >> >Bijan Parsia.