On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 1:04 AM, Offr4y <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Anyway I think that Leo is a self-sustaining system. I not only share the > reasons of Edward about it, but also would like to elaborate a little more > about why I think so, and show some balance between technical details like > DOM, directives, clones and the dialog that this made with the fact that Leo > is made in itself, which, for me, is the natural consequence of the Leo > history.
And you have done a superb job of creating this balance. Far better than I would have done. > > > When I was making the translation to the Spanish of the Leo docs I > started to realize the "cognitive bootstrapping" in the process of > creation of > Leo...So, if you're creating a program to think about programs, is natural > in some place, that the program let you to think about the program itself, > and that's what happened when Leo was made in itself. Well said. Of course, at the beginning this was not possible because there was no Leo, > but after a while a little component (the Leo precursors) bootstrapped > another component which replaced the previous one and let the system to be > described it itself. That's why I have always said that the day I discovered that I could use the MORE outliner as the prototype for Leo was the most important day in Leo's history. Within an hour of using MORE *as if* it were Leo, I had invented @others. This initial hour's work also dispelled *all* doubts about how to use outlines in literate programming. Later, I realized that literate programming needed to be reinvented. Imo, Knuth still does not really get it, as a recent interview shows. But that's really not important for this discussion. I had not so clearly thought of the process of creating Leo as a bootstrapping process, but there are many examples where Leo was, in fact, essential to further developments. The recent sax-graph work would have been almost impossible without the clarity that Leo provides for it's own sources. > You will see that this bootstrapping and replace is common in the examples > given in the web page like COLA or Squeak, in fact Squeak follow a similar > path to be made in itself before Squeak was done (Squeak precursors bring > Squeak and then using Squeak to describe itself and even the Virtual Machine > let the precursors behind). I'm honored you put Leo in the same class as the great Alan Kay's Squeak. > > > Why I'm making so emphasis in the system described in itself? Because > any self sustainable system needs to have an accessible discourse about > itself, a knowledge declaration on how it works, how is made, an this > knowledge declaration (ontology) needs to be readable and writable within > the > system. And here Leo fits as a charm. This fitness is not a coincidence, > is part of the literate programming inspired history of Leo, but also of the > design decisions behind that take corpus in things like directives > (@something), outlines and clones. This is the kind of "relaxed" writing I have so much trouble with myself. > > > For me Squeak and Leo have been two of the most significant > technologies to redefine my personal computer experience and the ideas > behind > computing. Go on Edward, Leo needs to be in that event and be known. Are you suggesting I hope on a plane to Potsdam next week? May be some people don't catch the idea because they're thinking in VM, > compilers and so on, but if you can make one important link with the people > who understand the principles behind Leo, Squeak, Cola, Steps, and generate > dialog between Leo and these projects, a lot of interesting things are going > to happen. In fact in a different but related matter, I'm thinking in making > a "ideas metamedia processor" with Squeak front end and a Leo back end... my > problem is that I have little idea about programming This would have made a superb paper in the self-sustaining systems conference--much better than any I would have written. Feel free to contact the conference organizers. You can cite my reply as an "official" endorsement of your ideas :-) Many thanks for this posting. It made my day. Edward --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
