Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!parcplace!khaw From: khaw@parcplace.com (Mike Khaw) Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk Subject: Re: Interface Builders? Message-ID: <755@parcplace.com> Date: 8 Dec 90 00:52:11 GMT References: <660381587@ <5600017@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <6326@mace.cc.purdue.edu> Organization: ParcPlace Systems, Mt. View, CA Lines: 38 nvi@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Charles C. Allen) writes: >For me, the main drawback to Smalltalk is closed nature of the system. How do you define "closed"? Smalltalk is certainly less closed than, say, a conventional C language system. You can see the source for all the components of your "library" (i.e., the classes in your image); you can even modify the compiler and debugger, as they are also part of the class library in your image. In earlier versions of Smalltalk-80, when Smalltalk WAS the window system, you could even modify the look and feel of the window system in Smalltalk. How easy is it to modify the look and feel of Windows 3.0, MacOS, OpewLook, Motif, OS2/PM, etc. (not that you're supposed to want to)? Smalltalk-80 also lets you link C functions into the virtual machine, so you can call external code that is callable from C. >It's not possible to produce "double-clickable" applications on the >Mac in either V/Mac or ST-80 (does V/PM solve this?). Why should Smalltalk-80 allows you to make double-clickable applications. Out of the box, the application file has no data fork; image files have only a data fork. So, you can save an image "onto" an application file to get a single file that contains both the virtual image and the virtual machine. For example, in the normal distribution, the "st80" image icon belongs to a folder named "Image", while "Image"'s parent folder contains the virtual machine, named "Smalltalk-80". If you launch the image by double-clicking on the image icon, the default folder is the "Image" folder. When you select "Save" in the running image, in the resulting prompter, if you replace the highlighted default name with "::Smalltalk-80", the image gets saved as the data fork of the application file. When you subsequently double-click the application icon, it doesn't ask for an image file via a StandardFileDialog as it previously would have, but runs the image saved in its data fork. -- Mike Khaw ParcPlace Systems, Inc., 1550 Plymouth St., Mountain View, CA 94043 Domain=khaw@parcplace.com, UUCP=...!{uunet,sun,decwrl}!parcplace!khaw