Hello,
I was looking at implementing yet another Smalltalk inspired open source
"embeddable" interpreter for java that uses an image file as opposed to
emitting regular java classes.  There are several reasons for this
decision I would be happy to discuss outside the scope of this email.  I
know there are several implementations out there that have varying
approaches to dealing with source code and the native platform.  

I was reading the bluebook chapters 26-30 and was wondering if it is
better to implement an interpreter that interprets bytecode instructions
or something that reads plain source code?  I would really like to have
a "portable" image format.  Source code is portable but tools like
Digitalk allow one to export repositories that not only include source
but include the debug session.  It seems that a portable bytecode
instruction set would be ideal.  I do not know much about other
Smalltalk implementations but I am also wondering if there is a
"standard" Smalltalk binary image format.

Thanks for your help
BR_joe