Re: Self demos

["Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr." <jecel@lsi.usp.br>]

On Fri, 7 Apr 1995 09:28:16 -0700 (PDT),
    Tilak Ravi <tilak@ecst.csuchico.edu> wrote:
> 
> 	Yes! that is great having a m/c where we could telnet and
> 	see the demos for self.

I have been using Self in a text mode from home and can say it
is very disapointing compared to the UI. Someone else ( sorry, I lost
the message ) asked about running Self without the UI. It is easy -
make sure the DISPLAY environment variable is not set up to a valid
X server and call Self. It complains and asks if you want to abort,
retry or continue without graphics. Choose the third option and there
you are!

> 	I there an existing port of self for linux. If not I would
> 	be glad to contribute to the effort.

Porting to Linux would be hard, but very worthwhile. You would have
to rewrite the compiler to generate 386 code, but other than
the register allocation I saw nothing there that is too Sparc
dependent.

I am writting a small Self interpreter that will run initially on
Linux, but it will be very slow and not totally compatible with
normal Self. I doubt you will be able to run large programs ( like
Mango or Cecil ) on it. It will also use svgalib rather than X windows.
The second version will run on the bare 386 hardware, so I don't
expect the Linux version to ever become very usable. I'll post it
here so anyone who is brave enough will be able to try it out.

Regards
-- Jecel