On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:16 AM, Torsten Bergmann <astares@gmx.de> wrote:
In the days of web based applications and Smalltalk web frameworks etc. it is often very usefull to open a browser/URL from within Smalltalk. Currently one has to load FFI and ExternalWebBrowser package.
Why not add support into the VM for that. This would allow us:
- provide a link to the homepage of Squeak and Pharo in the about box so people can easy access it right from the image
- to give Seaside/Pier/Iliad/Aida served images a button that opens the browser to the served sites
- server an html based "Help system" from the image and by choosing "Help" from the menu open it
- ...
On Windows it is just a ShellExecute API call - dont know about the other platforms. Is it possible that VM developers agree on a common protocol and provide it in the next VM release cycle?
Any comments?
The thing is... why adding it in the vm and not in the image directly via FFI? I mean, you already have support in the vm for that -> FFI plugin (and Native boost in NBCog). And it's abstract enough to do the job... I think that in the path to 2.0 there is the idea to have NativeBoost/FFI in the core distribution. It's just that there are plenty of things to do before :P.
Thx T.