All,
 
We received many emails concerning open sourcing St/JVM.  Below you will
find answers to some of the more common questions we received.
 
Jason Jones
jsj at ksc.com
----------------------------------
 
Q: Which dialect of Smalltalk would it support? VisualAge? VisualWorks?
 
A: Syntactically it is somewhere between VA, VW and Squeak.  It supports
some syntax that is unique to each of these. 
 
Q: Is the point of open-sourcing the project so that the Smalltalk community
would provide the code for each dialect to be compatible with Mission's
compiler?
 
A: That the Smalltalk and Java Communities would improve, integrate and
extend the existing code base 
 
Q: Do we get unboxed floats in Smalltalk/JVM?
 
A: Not currently, but you can call Java code that uses unboxed floats.
Smalltalk/JVM floats are real objects that actually understand math :-) 
 
Q: One question though: what class libraries will be available other than
the standard Smalltalk ones?
 
A: The current library is limited
 
Q: I was wondering if you have a demo or trial version of your Smalltalk to
Java JVM product?
 
A: Yes we will make the demo available first
 
Q: Sounds interesting, I'd like to know more about how the development
environment calls the java code during development.
 
A: Natively, no additional overhead for message sends 
 
Q: Does Smalltalk/JVM allow you to convert Smalltalk code into Java code?
 
A: No, the purpose of Smalltalk/JVM is to promote the use of Smalltalk, not
provide code migration.  
 
Q: My main interest now would be related to how this project would enable
Smalltalk to access Java classes and frameworks.
 
A: Native access to Java code
 
Q: In order to make it accessible you would need to release it with a
license such as Eclipse or Apache otherwise it won't get much attention.
 
A: We appreciate the suggestion; we will look at the Eclipse/Apache/LGPL
model
 
Q: Any chance this will work in J2ME? 
 
A: It produces 100% JVM compatible class files, so it should work.  We would
appreciate feedback if it does not.
 
Q: Why run Smalltalk on Java instead of running Java in the Smalltalk
environment.
 
A: There is a JVM on almost every computer (mostly free).  Eliminates single
VM supplier problem.  Leverages huge investment in the Java environment
 
Q: Why not create an Eclipse plug-in for Smalltalk/JVM?
 
A: That would be a great idea  
 
 
 
Jason Jones
Knowledge Systems Corporation
Smalltalk Industry Council
919.789.8549 x.21
www.ksc.com
www.stic.org
www.smalltalksolutions.com
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20050404/64ac2fbd/attachment.htm