🚀 go-pugleaf

   Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 22:36:19 GMT
   From: glippert@dale.cts.com (George Lippert)

   Smalltalk & NeXT enthusiasts:

   If you are interested in seeing a good commercial version of
   Smalltalk on the NeXT I would like to solicit your support by
   calling the two main suppliers of same.  The current state, to the
   best of my knowledge is this:

   Parc Place Systems: 
      They are porting to the NeXT and expect to ship in a few months. (But I
      expect the price will be out of reach of many NeXT owners, based on their
      pricing on other Unix boxes.)

   Digitalk:
      They are in the early stages of their first port to a Unix box and they
      have selected the RS/6000 as their first target.  They have no plans to
      port to the NeXT because they perceive no demand there.

   Let's call these guys and show that there is some demand and that we want it
   reasonably priced.

Or, put a NeXTStep front end on GNU Smalltalk.  Think of the possibilities...

> Or, put a NeXTStep front end on GNU Smalltalk.  Think of the possibilities...

Think bigger.  Don't put a NeXTstep front end on GNU Smalltalk, make a
version of GNU Smalltalk that lets you send messages to Objective-C
objects!  This would be useful on any platform that has GNU
Objective-C and SmallTalk, and on the NeXT it would give folks access
to just about EVERYTHING.
-- 
Doug DeJulio
ddj+@cmu.edu

>
> Think bigger.  Don't put a NeXTstep front end on GNU Smalltalk, make a
> version of GNU Smalltalk that lets you send messages to Objective-C
> objects!  
...
> -- 
> Doug DeJulio
> ddj+@cmu.edu

Yes; turn GNU Smalltalk into the common scripting language
for NeXT apps. With new apps starting to support Distributed
Objects APIs (and with some hope of NeXT having CORBA compliance 
in the future) something like this is very necessary. Smalltalk
may not be the right language for non-programmers; maybe it's too 
cryptic (but still better than C). Maybe something more like the
CraftScript in Xanthus' Craftman, but that can be linked with or
embedded in any app. See 'Tcl' for an X example; and AppleScript
or ARREX for another.

Whatever; the point is it should be a real object language that
can send and receive messages in a natural way to and from the
AppKit and Distributed Objects. At one point StepStone had an 
Objective-C interpreter; I suppose that would work, but it carries
a lot of C baggage. 

Such a scripting language would let 'just plain folks' compose
custom meta-apps from bits and pieces of existing productivity 
apps that provide object APIs.

--Russ
rs05@gte.com

>Think bigger.  Don't put a NeXTstep front end on GNU Smalltalk, make a
>version of GNU Smalltalk that lets you send messages to Objective-C
>objects!  This would be useful on any platform that has GNU
>Objective-C and SmallTalk, and on the NeXT it would give folks access
>to just about EVERYTHING.

My company offers such a product.  It is called the Smalltalk Interface to 
Objective-C.  It makes Objective-C objects look like Smalltalk Objects.  
I wonder if it would be worthwhile to port it to the NeXT.

Regards
Christopher Lozinski