Abstract
Squeak is an open, highly-portable Smalltalk-80 implementation whose virtual machine is written entirely in Smalltalk, making it easy to debug, analyze and change. To achieve practical performance, a translator produces an equivalent C program whose performance is comparable to commercial Smalltalks.
Other noteworthy aspects of Squeak include:
- real time sound and music synthesis written entirely in Smalltalk
- extensions of BitBlt to handle color of any depth and anti-aliased image rotating and scaling
- network access support that allows simple construction of servers and other useful facilities
- it runs bit-identical on many platforms (Windows, Mac, Unix and others)
- a compact object format that typically requires only a single word of overhead per object
- a simple yet efficient incremental garbage collector for 32-bit direct pointers
- efficient bulk-mutation of objects
Squeak is avaiable for free via the Internet, at this and other sites. Each release includes platform-independent support for color, sound, and network access, with complete source code. Originally developed on the Macintosh, members of its user community have since ported it to numerous other platforms including Windows 95 and NT, Windows CE (it runs on the Cassiopeia and the HP320LX), all common flavors of Unix, Acorn RiscOS, and a bare chip (the Mitsubishi M32R/D).
Note: The Squeak Smalltalk system bears no relation to the "Squeak" language designed by Rob Pike and Luca Cardelli in 1985, nor its successor, "Newsqueak".
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