LittleSmalltalk

ATalk

Jim Steichen, the author of AmigaTalk, contacted me to inform me about his fork of LittleSmalltalk V1.

He describes his system, which he is going to port to Linux, in the following words:

[---snip---]
Currently, the release version of atalk exits with a segmentation fault, but the debug version does not (isn't that the way it always works out? sigh). Also, the remove Class dialog is currently not going to do any such thing, but this should be the only part of the GUI that is non-functional.

I would like to ask that no one make modifications to the source code of atalk without informing me of what they did and more importantly, why they did the modification.
There's a lot of room for improvement in the source code to be sure, but I would prefer that anyone wishing to make changes, send them to me and I'll do the change (if it's worthwhile, that is). Anyone comparing my code to the original Little-Smalltalk V1 code will hardly recognize it. Dangerous MACRO expansions were re-written into functions, long incomprehensible functions were re-factored into more readable code, etc. Also, some improvements were made to the language itself, such as Singleton class support, more debugging and tracing code, re-written parser, etc.

Areas that need improvement:

1. Memory allocation and deallocation
2. Re-doing the build environment so that it uses autoconf, and other GNU tools to build the executable.
3. Finish writing the Plot3 code so that it uses openGL library.
4. Come up with more Linux System interfacing, such as sockets, other devices, etc.
5. finish adding the missing wxWidget classes, so that Users can make completely functional GUIs in smalltalk code (I'm currently working on Menus)..

From the about dialog in ATalk:

This version of ATalk is a wxWidgets application for interfacing with atalk V2.7, which was available on the Amiga PC.
ATalk was written by J.T. Steichen so he would NOT have to rely on either GNU smalltalk or Squeak to do smalltalk programming. I started on the original version of ATalk for the Amiga PC back in 1986.

link to Amigatalk page:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~jimbot/amigatalk.htm
executable Amiga archive: http://aminet.net/dev/lang/AmigaTalk.lha
Amiga source code archive: http://aminet.net/dev/lang/amigatalksrc.lha

Original AmigaTalk readme file from aminet:

Short: V2.7 Update of AmigaTalk (Smalltalk GUI)
Author: jimbot@frontiernet.net (James T. Steichen)
Uploader: jimbot frontiernet net (The Author)
Type: dev/lang
Version: V2.7
Architecture: m68k-amigaos

AmigaTalk V2.7 is the LAST version of 'Little Smalltalk' (V1.0 by Tim Budd) that
has been re-written & enhanced for the Amiga line of computers.

James T. Steichen, Copyright (c) 1998-2004.

Be sure to have the sound turned on when you start the program!
(It's called AmigaTalk for a reason!)

See AmigaTalk:help/History.guide for all of the improvements.

I have decided NOT TO CONTINUE further work on this project since OS3.9 is pretty much obsolete & OS4.0 has no agreeable development environment to try to port it to the AmigaOne (which I now own, as well as my old A4000T). I do not consider gcc (& even worse, gdb) to be suitable for developing software on the Amiga (at least, not for a hobbyist such as myself). I've gotten used to using the SAS-C compiler & more importantly, the codeProbe debugger (cpr) for developing programs for the Amiga. Even though the SAS-C compiler still works under OS4.0, codeProbe does not. This makes it much more difficult to write programs for the new AmigaOne hardware. Also, since Hyperion has NOT released any meaningful documentation on OS4.0, it's just impossible to proceed any further. If anyone that downloads this program asks me, I will gladly furnish them with the source code, provided that they intend to port it to the AmigaOne & that they can live with me retaining the copyright to the source code.

Best of Luck, Jim Steichen


WARNING:
~~~~~~~

There are some things that I can no longer test due to the fact
that my System has a CyberVision 64D graphics card & is using
the cybergraphics.library (et al). I would appreciate some
feedback about problems that you might find, since I will not
always be able to find them.

The system is currently NOT fully documented (especially IFF & BOOPSI
Classes), so expect to see some holes in the documentation.

I did NOT go back & verify that all the Test files still work as
shown.

REQUIREMENTS
~~~~~~~~~~~~
narrator.device & translator.library (or edit the c/InitializeCommands
file & remove all lines that reference 'nar').

68040 or better microprocessor. (68000 or 68020 available upon request).

20+ Mb of RAM

AmigaDOS 3.5+

Hard disk (10MB of space).

HISTORY
~~~~~~~
For Version 2.7 the following enhancements/bug fixes were
made:

The following items have been fixed:

1. The NewGadget SliderGadget Class.
2. The NewGadget ScrollerGadget Class.
3. Menu checking now agrees with command line parameters.
4. Install script now works correctly.

See AmigaTalk:help/History.guide for the rest.
[---snap---]

Great work, Jim!

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