> On 2022-09-21, at 9:36 AM, Eliot Miranda <eliot.miranda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Imagine a deployment image where, to save space and/or to obfuscate, all Symbols have been replaced by SmallIntegers (*). No arity information is available until a lookup is complete.  That’s why the VM does not assume anything about message selectors.  They’re simply treated as unique atoms.
> 
> (*) this is a real example; the Active Book, an early tablet computer, did this in the late ‘80’s

Good grief, I'd forgotten about that part. We really did a lot of Jolly Clever Things for that.

For anyone interested, there is a little history and a picture or two at

http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/53902/Active-Book/
https://youtu.be/h_sztDMInY8 (which I've never seen before! So very, very, 1980's, such a young looking Hauser.)
https://www.microsoft.com/buxtoncollection/detail.aspx?id=158
and 
https://groups.google.com/g/comp.arch/c/hPsDLEPf2eo/m/nvJR_d7nnyYJ (the first real reveal of the ARM)

I actually have the software, sort of. It only resides on a 1987 vintage 20MB (yes, megabyte)  Acorn formatted hard disk that hasn't spun up in... 30 years? There's an adventure to be had in trying to extract that...

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Strange OpCodes: EF: Emulate Fireworks