StepTalk at Smalltalk Conference (ESUG 2003)

[Stefan Urbanek]

Hi,

I would like to let you know, that I was given an hour at the ESUG 2003 
Conference (http://esug2003.esug.org/) for StepTalk. The title of my talk is: 
StepTalk - 'Illusion of Cooperating Objects Environment'. Here is the abstract:

<abstract>
On the computer, we would like to work with objects that we know from our life. 
Currently we work with many different applications to acomplish our tasks and 
usually, our task requires the use of more than one application. Because 
applications do not usually cooperate, accomplishing some tasks is more 
difficult than it needs to be. In a single object environments, like Smalltalk, 
the problem of different selfish applications is eliminated by the nature of 
the environment. We have created a framework, called StepTalk, that produces an 
illusion of such an environment of cooperating objects. Our framework was 
inspired by the idea of Smalltalk. The goal of StepTalk is to make existing 
operating environments look like a Smalltalk environment where applications are 
objects. StepTalk is not another implementation of Smalltalk. It is more of an 
object abstraction layer over Objective-C applications and distributed objects. 
Applications behave like any other objects in the environmen!
t. The 
purpose of the StepTalk project is to glue both applications and distributed objects along with the framework into a single environment and to allow users to communicate with the objects in different languages. Smalltalk is one of those languages.
</abstract>

Here are some assorted points that I would like to mention:

- Application as an object with not-only-human interface
- Reusability (of existing applications and DO servers) at higher level
- Smalltalk principles as the basis for scripting framework: Nouns-objects and 
verbs-messages.
- StepTalk architecture: Application interface, Language Engines, Object finders
- Script Objects (see http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Script%20Objects)

GNUstep and Objective-C, as base for StepTalk, will have it's place throught 
the whole talk. Besides other things, I would like to show, that GNUstep and 
for-may-years-forgotten ObjectiveC exists. Moreover I would like to show, how 
Smalltalk and Objective-C can live together, benefit from common object model 
and reuse each others code.

With this email, I would like to ask you for some comments. What do you think, 
I should mention? What not? What to emphasise? Note, that the talk will include 
not only current state, but also future directions and ideas.

Thanks,

Stefan Urbanek
--
http://urbanek.host.sk

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you 
win.
- Mahatma Gandhi