NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/sys/next/programm/7799

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-17 | 1.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!ceylon![e-mail]
From: [e-mail] (Russ Sasnett)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.programmer
Subject: Re: Smalltalk for the NeXT - Let's get programming!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 17 Dec 92 17:16:40 GMT
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>
> 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
> [e-mail]

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
[e-mail]