| United States Worldwide |
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| United States Worldwide |
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 Release 4.1.6
Late-breaking news: Self now runs under Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). Additionally, polymorphic inline caches have been implemented on PowerPC, leading to a more responsive Self system! See the included release notes for a full list of changes. Previous news: Self now runs as a Mac OS X application. We have dropped support for Mac OS 9. We have provided a Project Builder project to ease the building of the Self VM under Mac OS X. An AppleScript application is also included that lets you drag and drop snapshots to start them. In 1995 the Self Group at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc., and Stanford University made available Release 4.0 of the experimental object-oriented programming language Self. Although Self is no longer an official project at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, we have seen many of Self's innovations adopted. The Morphic GUI framework has been incorporated into Squeak, and the Virtual Machine ideas provided the initial inspiration for the Java™ HotSpot™ performance engine. However, the language and programming environment have yet to be mined for ideas. Now, Self runs on the Macintosh platform (albeit without optimization). We have used it on a 400 MHz G3 PowerBook (a Lombard). These days, we use 550Mhz G4 Powerbooks running Mac OS X. OS X seems to make Self more responsive. In order to port Self, Dave has cleaned up the virtual machine, and added a portability framework. This release will therefore be of interest to two new groups, those who want to try using a prototype-based language on a Macintosh, and those who want to port Self to other platforms (such as WinTel). Regardless, if you want to run Self 4.1.6 or work on the virtual machine, start by obtaining and unpacking: After downloading and unpacking the Self 4.1.6 file, find the objects directory. On the Macintosh, you can double-click either of the two snapshot files. (The demo snapshot contains the self-guided tutorial.) If you are not on the Macintosh, you need to make the Self file executable (chmod +x Self) and type either Self -s Demo.self or Self -s BareBones.snap. ( If you make the snapshots executable and put the objects directory in your path, you can simply invoke a snapshot file to start Self. ) If you want to work on the virtual machine, you also need: If you want to discuss Self with other interested people, there is a mailing list at self-interest@egroups.com. For information on the programming environment (essentially unchanged for Self 4.1), please refer to the Web page on Self 4.0. We hope that you will enjoy the chance to experience a different form of object-oriented programming.
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