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From: obrien@aerospace.aero.org (Michael O'Brien)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: C to Smalltalk
Message-ID: <81923@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Date: 23 Aug 90 19:28:42 GMT
References: <1780@abvax.UUCP>
Sender: news@aerospace.aero.org
Reply-To: obrien@aerospace.aero.org (Michael O'Brien)
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation
Lines: 27


In article <1780@abvax.UUCP>, jaz@icd.ab.com (Jack A. Zucker) writes:
|> I know this is a naive question, but is it possible to
|> call smalltalk methods from C using either the Digitalk
|> or Park Place products ?

	Goodness knows what ParcPlace has planned for the future - they
are enough of a business now not to let much out - but in the current
release it's definitely impossible.  The VM which runs the whole show
is a separate process, and while you can link your own code into the VM
as a set of primitive methods, the VM is definitely in control.  Of
course when your own primitive method code is running YOU are in
control, but since you don't really have a handle on things like
terminal I/O, the rest of Smalltalk is just sort of dead in the water,
and hence so is the window it's running in.

	About the best you could hope for is to fire up a Smalltalk
image with a set of RPC stubs in it, and call it via RPC's.  Some folks
are working on methods for this but nothing's really released yet.  It's
slow and awkward.

	I haven't used Digitalk Smalltalk yet, but since it also is
based on the use of a separate VM process, it probably has the same
shortcomings.
--
Mike O'Brien
obrien@aerospace.aero.org