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From: johnson@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: smalltalk books
Message-ID: <80500091@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 90 01:29:59 GMT
References: <147@cnam.UUCP>
Lines: 19
Nf-ID: #R:cnam.UUCP:147:p.cs.uiuc.edu:80500091:000:910
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    Mar  7 19:44:00 1990


Peter da Silva <peter@ficc.uu.net> says:
>I have thought that the Smalltalk syntax for defining a new class was
>a bit inconsistent with the rest of the language.

In my opinion, Smalltalk doesn't have any syntax for defining a new class.
It is just an accident that the browser uses a method to create a class.
It would be just as reasonable for it to have a special fill-in-the-blank
type of form.  In fact, the class creation template is really just a cheap
imitation for that.  (This doesn't mean that I disaprove of the way Smalltalk
creates classes.)

Actually, I like Peter's idea.  It works if you want to make a textual
representation for Smalltalk programs, but it is unnecessary if you
are happy with the standard hypertext-like definition.  The Subclass: 
message should be easy to implement, but the Method:Is: message would be 
harder.

Ralph Johnson - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign