Guys, there are so much lines of inquiry in this thread I'm getting lost. Here's a little summary.
[message] Author: Julian Leviston <julian at leviston.net> http://vpri.org/mailman/private/fonc/2012/003081.html As I understand it, Frank is an experiment that is an extended version of DBJr that sits atop lesserphic, which sits atop gezira which sits atop nile, which sits atop maru all of which which utilise ometa and the "worlds" idea. If you look at the http://vpri.org/html/writings.php page you can see a pattern of progression that has emerged to the point where Frank exists. >From what I understand, maru is the finalisation of what began as pepsi and coke. Maru is a simple s-expression language, in the same way that pepsi and coke were. In fact, it looks to have the same syntax. Nothing is the layer underneath that is essentially a symbolic computer - sitting between maru and the actual machine code (sort of like an LLVM assembler if I've understood it correctly). [..] http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/index.php/Main_Page On the bottom of that page, you'll see a link to the tinlizzie site that references "experiment" and the URL has dbjr in it... as far as I understand it, this is as much frank as we've been shown. http://tinlizzie.org/dbjr/ [/message] About the DBJR repository: http://tinlizzie.org/dbjr/ It contains ".lbox" files. Including "frank.lbox" About the "lbox" files: [message] Author: Josh Grams <josh at qualdan.com> http://vpri.org/mailman/private/fonc/2012/003089.html DBJr seems to be a Squeak thing. Each of those .lbox directories has a SISS file which seems to be an S-expression serialization of Smalltalk objects. Sounds like probably what you need is the stuff under "Text Field Spec for LObjects" on the VPRI wiki page. Not that I know *anything* about this whatsoever... [/message] Josh, do you mean I need the squeak VM, image and changes files? The active essay itself works (except that updates break it), but it doesn't seem to be an actual editor. Maybe I'm missing something. I think the lbox files are meant to be read with Lesserphic. According to the Lesserphic tutorial, I would need a Moshi Squeak Image. But I'm not sure where to get a generic, pristine one. The "Text Field Spec for LObjects" image says it is a Moshi image. Anyway, when I run the updates, it breaks. I don't know how to get out of the "Text Field" project and open a new Morphic project to try the tutorial. Also, I see a lot of Etoys mentions. Is it related? Maybe an Etoys image also works for Lesserphic? About Maru: [message] Author: David Girle davidgirle at gmail.com http://vpri.org/mailman/private/fonc/2012/003088.html Take a look at the page: http://piumarta.com/software/maru/ it has the original version you have + current. There is a short readme in the current version with some examples that will get you going. [/message] This works, thanks. Maru is well worth further exploration. Still no GUI though ;) More to the point. So, Maru is Coke, right? I still don't get why so much emphasis on the fact that it can compile its own implementation language. Isn't that the definition of a self-hosting language, and isn't that feature relatively frequent these days, especially in Lisp-like languages? I'm just trying to understand what it's all about. Another doubt is that, IIRC, COLA is supposed to have two languages, an object language to implement computations, and a lambda language to describe their meaning. Does Maru fit both roles at the same time? [message] Author: Julian Leviston http://vpri.org/mailman/private/fonc/2012/003090.html In the tinlizzie.org/updates/exploratory/packages you'll find montecello packages that contains some of experiments, I'm fairly sure, one of which is: (yep, you guessed it) FrankVersion-yo.16.mcz [/message] I loaded this Monticello package from a squeak image, but nothing happened. It's described as "a dummy package to keep monotonic update numbers" or something like that. I also tried to load Gezira, but there are dependency issues and other errors. Maybe someone with more Squeak experience can clear that up. Maybe we need a Moshi Squeak image. An aside: By the way, my commentary about Jedi elitism was largely in jest. Pretty much all great visionaries have their quirks and I don't mind it at all that they prefer to focus on children. OTOH, there's a number of reasons why I humbly think the emphasis on children may not yield the expected benefits. The underlying assumption seems to be that people have a strong tendency to stick to their childhood toys, so if only those toys were based on powerful tools, a new generation of programmers would build their adult tools from their childhood toys. In practice, I see two problems with this idea. First, when children become teenagers they are usually more than happy to throw their toys aways and grab the adult stuff, to feel like adults. If there's no adult-friendly version of the powerful technology, they will simply use the crappy technology other adults use. The second problem is that as soon as children become of age, they are also pressured by their parents, teachers and eventually bosses and co-workers, to do useful stuff. Again, they will need visible adult tools with a vibrant community of adult users. Anyway, I'm glad there are people like the VPRI guys, hopefully building the future of computing. Also, thanks again to everyone for your help. Best, -Martin
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