On Fri, Dec 17, 2004 at 09:41:54AM -0800, Craig Latta wrote:
> 
> 	(I'm sending this again as a new thread, just in case people with
> threaded readers might have missed it the first time when it was in a
> subthread.)
> 
> 
> Hi all--
> 
>         Russell writes:
> 
> > My plan is to have nearly everything written in Squeak with very
> > basic primitives, that way it allows more control...
> 
>         David writes:
> 
> > If you're going to do a complete rewrite, it would also be good to
> > generalize the notion of an I/O channel for files, sockets, pipes,
> > or whatever other external resources can be modeled in this way.
> 
>         I've done this with Flow ( http://netjam.org/flow ). I
> originally wrote it in 1997, first released it in 1998, and have been
> trying to get it into Squeak ever since, without much success. :)  I've
> also spoken with both of you about it before, so I'm a little surprised
> it hasn't been mentioned in this conversation before now (not upset,
> just a little surprised :). I'm especially surprised that Tim didn't
> mention it, since he sat next to me while I implemented most of the MIDI
> support. :)

Craig is of course right. To my knowledge, Flow is the only complete
reworking of the I/O system available. It's particularly good that it
extends the notion of I/O smoothly for network connections, and it
carries the considerable advantage of existing and actually working.

To some extent this reminds me of efforts to replace the compiler.
It can be a bit of a logistical challenge to replace the foundation
after the house is already built. But once it's done, new things
become possible (e.g. Squat in this case).

Dave