Mumble is a Smalltalk GUI framework and IDE written for GNU Smalltalk. It began life as a set of experiments with Gtk+ that were eventually going to get incorporated into a port of the existing Tk Browser. Along the line, I decided that Mumble suited me better than traditional Smalltalk Browsers, so I'm continuing to develop it, and leaving the Gtk+ port of the Browser to somebody else.

Attempting to show (not very well), that the classname in the Method View is a button that opens a Class View, and the superclass name in the Class View is a button that opens a Class View on the superclass.

A Notifier (call-stack view). This is as much of a fully-fledged Debugger as you get right now, and, to be honest, Proceed and Abandon don't entirely work like you'd like them to.

FAQ

Because it rocks! Smalltalk knocks the spots off every other language I've ever looked at. I have a suspicion that languages like Lisp and Haskell are similarly powerful, but, frankly, they do my head in, so that's that. Here's a briefish list off the top of my head:

Block closures: It's now hard for me to conceive of using a language that doesn't have first class functions.
Images: The ability to save and reload the complete state of a running application, including all its processes, is awesome. Mumble is just (as at 29/4/2004) reaching the stage where it can do this, which is very exciting.
Everything is an object: How can you claim to be doing OO if your language doesn't have this?
Strong, dynamic typing: By which I mean, every object is unambiguously of one class or another, and variables and function returns can be an object of any class (including nil, which is an object in Smalltalk).

Because it's Free Software, with a capital 'F', and because I don't quite get on with Squeak (this is a personal thing; Squeak also has some awesome features which you won't find anywhere else).

Gtk+ is a really nicely put together toolkit, and it's Free Software, with a capital 'F'. It's also written in C, which makes it easy to hook it in.

I don't entirely get on with the traditional Smalltalk browser. I find that I have three or four open at the same time, all showing the same class, and wasting all the space with duplicated information. By contrast, the philosophy of Mumble is "Small, specialized windows".

Also, the existing GST browser hasn't (yet) been ported to Gtk. If it had, I would probably be hacking on that, rather than doing my own thing.

A Browser is a type of window that allows you to browse the classes and code in the system. Traditionally, it consists of a set of upper panes which show lists of classes, and the methods of those classes, and a lower text pane, which shows details of the currently selection (be it a class or a method), and which can be used to edit the definition.

Lots. Pretty much all of the basic features are there, but there's quite a bit of work to do before it even has all the features of the Tk Browser.

A better Debugger: Currently (29/5/2004) there is only a Notifier (stack trace), and it doesn't Proceed or Abandon properly.
MethodView needs to embed an EvaluatorView, so that it has all of the functionality that that provides.
Support for Projects or Packages. Currently, I'm favouring Projects, being a way to manage Smalltalk source code, because that will help me develop and package up Mumble.

I started writing Mumble because I wanted to write a calendar app, and found that I needed an IDE to do it in. That calendar app is progressing... slowly.

I also want to port GST to the Zaurus so that I can replace the calendaring app on there, but that's a longer-term goal, and it wouldn't be easy to use Gtk+ or Qt :-(.

My wife Sarah drew them for me (in MS Paint), and I think they're great (the submarine is better)!