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From: bnfb@uw-june.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Communication with the outside world
Message-ID: <3126@uw-june.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Sep-87 13:53:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.3126
Posted: Fri Sep 18 13:53:26 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Sep-87 15:58:02 EDT
References: <17414@aero.ARPA>
Reply-To: bnfb@uw-june.UUCP (Bjorn Freeman-Benson)
Organization: U of Washington, Computer Science, Seattle
Lines: 22
Keywords: communication IPC external

>[..about communication with external machines and processes..]

Here at the University of Washington, the Heterogeneous Computer
Systems (HCS) Project has implemented Heterogeneous RPC (HRPC).
The goal of HRPC (and HCS) is not to dictate a standard RPC or
interface, but to adapt to what it there.  As a result, HRPC is
alive and working from Smalltalk.  

It is implemented in Tek Smalltalk, and uses a sub-process to handle
the TCP/IP connections in lieu of appropriate primitives.
However, if such primitives were available...

The key point I'm trying to bring up is that Smalltalk-HRPC provides
classes that handle all the dirty work, and it is quite easy to have
a Smalltalk client talk to C programs, PASCAL programs, Modula2
programs, LISP programs, Mesa Programs, etc.

For more information, contact:
    Ed Lazowska		lazowska@june.cs.washinton.edu
    Sung Kwon Chung	sung@june.cs.washington.edu

					    Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson