Squeak-dev May 2003

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204 participants
710 discussions

Re: What makes up a "User" in a Class Object? (was Well factored Objects)
by Darius 02 May '03

02 May '03

I reread my message and I've now included these rephrased points: An optimal interface is just as essential for organizing knowledge and subsequent reuse as a Collection is essential for organizing knowledge and subsequent reuse. ... > Note that you do the same. If you hand your credit card to a > warehouse clerk, all you are interested in is where that clerk's hand > is and whether it already has taken hold of the card so you can let > go. You couldn't care less about his email address. But if his hand makes a copy of the card number & exp date of everyone's card whos given him their card in the queue before me, I might not want to give him my card no matter where his hand is! And Ill not let go should he grab it! My behavior is not due to what I see, but what I remember of similar behavior. I don't have to see him using my card w/o my permission to make a decision. So too is the dialog between the OS & the user one of appearance, rituals, and memory.

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Seaside-friendly Hosting Needed
by Derek Brans 02 May '03

02 May '03

I need to host static content for multiple domains on the same box as a Squeak image running Seaside. I will need at least 50MB in a home directory and a bunch of ports. Can anyone provide that service? If so, for how much? Thanks, Derek Derek Brans Nerd on a Wire Web design that's anything but square http://www.nerdonawire.com phone: 604.874.6463 mailto: brans(a)nerdonawire.com

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Re: What makes up a "User" in a Class Object? (was Well factored Objects)
by Darius 02 May '03

02 May '03

>> Why is there no persistent class representing the user in total? > >Squeak being a personal multimedia environment, it could probably be >said that any image is some representation of the user. And if I have more than one image... ?? Does that mean Im now User ver 3.5 ? :) >> Isnt the most cherished person in our programming life, the "user", more than an I/O port? >> >Because that's the bit you're interested in. If there's one sure sign >of an object modeler type gone wrong, it is that he starts modeling >reality without constraining himself with actual needs. Generally true. Except in this case, the need (having gone unstated in my prior posting) is to have all the right information in the right place w/o too much effort finding it and too much effort organizing how its display. UI & cognition concerns itself with the essentials of the very meaning of all computer use needs and how to express them. Its a need that users have a hard time expressing due to the psychological principle that if its printed on paper or on a computer display, its suppose to be that way and that its the best and only way. Most dont know about or even imagine keystroke/mouse automation macros at an OS level. Auto-complete is mostly in an OS. In Squeak we can search for and text label on any morph/form. You cant do that in a MS Office application. There you can search the help document and hope the help document has the text label of the form/dialog box in it. Such a concept doesnt occur to a vast majority of users and is hidden in Squeak to the casual user. Is there a commonly known place in the Squeak environment where the user can fill out a form to express himself that I dont like how this works in Squeak & I dont know how to change it? And if they do make a change its only an effect, another choice (of a great many) to make for the next user (do I need or dont need rather than a model to be reused. Why they did it is only in the comments, not in a model. A user interface is a compression of a large amount of data into a very small view port to that data and to the commands that operate on that data. Much of whats hidden (the data, data nesting structure, the display format, and potential operations on the data) remain in the users memory. So, there is much more to a mouse movement than Where did it go? A mouse movement can be very inefficient if it takes 30 mouse clicks, movements crossing the entire display, and several different commands to put two pieces of data together. But Squeak doesnt care. There is no representation of thats too far for a user to go in Squeak. One could say thats for a good UI designer to know. Another would say Wheres the designers tool box so that everyone benefits from an experts knowledge? Would one say there should be no Collection Object hierarchy since thats what data structure designers should know how to do? The interface is as essential to organizing knowledge as a Collection. > Note that you do the same. If you hand your credit card to a > warehouse clerk, all you are interested in is where that clerk's hand > is and whether it already has taken hold of the card so you can let > go. You couldn't care less about his email address. But if his hand makes a copy of the card number & exp date of everyone whos given him their card in the queue before me, I might not want to give him my card no matter where his hand is! And Ill not let go if he does grab it! >> Why dont we create class hierarchies of our GUIs to match the >> already researched rules of cognitive science? > >Because cognitive science tells us the domain is too complex to be >modeled by simple class hierarchies? But OOP advertises itself a better because it more closely matches reality and accommodates data and rules at any level of complexity. Is not Squeak the idea processor, yet it remains ignorant of the process by which ideas are created & expressed. Im not talking about the mathematical models but logical models to efficiently answer the users questions of what, when, where, and why and sometimes how and who. >> Jef Raskins The Humane Interface >Best laugh I had in a long time, this article. The guy steps up and >invents Emacs/Vim with a lot of fanfare. Very true. But dont forget, Emacs/Vim has only been for programmers - the heavy data users & manipulators of the past. Most GUI & OS users have no clue such a thing exists! Now everyone is a heavy data user but OS tools havent grown to match. Even Squeak claims to try to remove the line between user & programmer. Educating the user to his/her new role and new needs hasnt grown to match. Its the design with the intent of creating habits, efficient productive habits thats important. For example, how many OO programmers (or super-users) know the 7 +/- 2 rule of thumb for not taxing short term memory? Or even better rules for not taxing human limits. http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/g2699/0003/2699000312/print.jhtml Its not a mathematical formula or algorithm... just a guide how objects could be visually juxtaposed, sequentially presented over time, or categorized. Keyword: Chunking. It can be applied to any menu, list, hierarchical outline, number of windows, number of widgets, or number of minimized window title bars, length of window, pages in a BookMorph. From that rule we also get the use of white space in GeeMail Morphs, the use of bullet points, paragraphs and heading in text, etc. There can be automated procedures for optimizing data presentation time & space to facilitate an expressed purpose if given the requirements and known human limits and preference... something a little better than staggerPolicyString . Web design brings this more to the publics attention; but, who would make the link between a web designer and a Squeak user creating/manipulating morphs? > As far as a 'multi-modal' interface is concerned, I do agree that > Squeak relies a bit too much on the mouse alone. But also, I think > that Squeak should have mouse gestures - there's a gesture recognizer > in there after all, and I heard good reports on them. There's a lot > of work to be done here... Id say fundamentally essential work with a great payoff at the end in terms of accessibility and popularity (of Squeak). >From time to time I still astound folks with Alt-Tab, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-A, and Ctrl-Shft-End along with other keyboard magic in the MS world. Cheers, Darius

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Re: AppleScript and Squeak
by Anthony Adachi 01 May '03

01 May '03

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Aaron J Reichow wrote: > On Thu, 1 May 2003, Anthony Adachi wrote: > > > In addition, I'm wondering in what capacity is it > > possible to communicate with AppleScripts which exist > > outside of the Squeak image? > > In what way? In various aspects, actually. The work that I've done to this point has mainly been in AppleScript so I'm just curious as to the range of possibilities in AppleScript's interactions with Squeak. For instance, (with either the AppleScript classes in the standard image or from a third party) can one get back an AppleScript object which can be stored or manipulated within Squeak? Like a reference, number, record, script object (with it's properties intact) ect.? Or is is one limited to only getting back strings? > With the Applescript class in Squeak, you basically get > one > core action: Applescript>>#doIt:, which evaluates an > AppleScript string. > You pass the doIt: method regular AppleScript code- > it's not like using an > AppleEvents package with Perl, TCL, etc... You can use > it for anything > you'd have other AS scripts for, including calling > other AppleScripts. > > The idea is that you evalate Applescript doIt: > 'somecode goes here' and > what is returned from AppleScript is returned to you in > a string. If you > ask it what 4+4 is, you get a string with '8'; if you > ask it what the > names of the Safari windows are, you get an > AppleScript-formatted literal > array containing the window titles. You can then parse > this string or do > whatever you need to do to get at the info. So, I assume one is limited to just getting strings? Then, if needed, one must extract and translate that data into the appropriate Smalltalk object e.g.- '8' to 8 or '{"hello", 7, }' to #('hello' 7 ). > I don't think there is anyway currently to have > AppleScript call into > Squeak as-is. *However,* using the XML-RPC or SOAP > stuff that comes with > the OS X version of AppleScript and XML-RPC or SOAP > classes easily > installed through SqueakMap, you could write a > framework for scripting > apps that is callable through XML-RPC or SOAP. If your > application > already had the ability to be scripted through another > means, adding > XML-RPC or SOAP would be pretty easy to do, a fairly > simple wrap job > provided your app scripting API didn't need to return > complex squeak > objects. I'm using Mac OS 9.1 so I don't have those XML-RPC or SOAP components. Thanks, Anthony __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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Re: [ANN] [ENH] FillInTheBlankMorph Look
by Daniel Vainsencher 01 May '03

01 May '03

Ned Konz <ned(a)bike-nomad.com> wrote: > On Wednesday 30 April 2003 12:27 pm, Stephane Ducasse wrote: > > I would not do this change. I imagine that we should find a much > > clever way of notifying user. Avi suggested to me that we could > > have exception that would be caught > > and letting the used decide if he wants to put a UI or not for > > headless image for examples. > > This is already how ComplexProgressIndicator works. Your underlying > code raises ProgressNotifications. So what we'd need is two things - A. A list of all places that such sometimes-interactive processes call the UI (in order to convert them to raising exceptions) B. A few other handlers of such exceptions, where Morphic is not present (versions for MVC and for the emergency evaluator prompt might be a good start). Daniel

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AppleScript and Squeak
by Anthony Adachi 01 May '03

01 May '03

Hello I was perusing the System Browser and came across an number of AppleScript classes under the VMConstruction-Applescript category. What are these for? Are they really only intended to be used by those maintaining Squeak and who are building the VM? Reading the source code It seems that one can compile and execute scripts from within Squeak. How does the performance of executing such scripts compare to compiled AppleScripts running in the Finder? With these or any third party projects can the scripts within Squeak be pre-compiled (as opposed to compiling them at run-time) so that they run faster? In addition, I'm wondering in what capacity is it possible to communicate with AppleScripts which exist outside of the Squeak image? For instance, as a result of compiling and executing a script within Squeak, can info be sent back from a script (or scriptable application) existing outside of the Squeak image. i.e.- What's the level of interaction possible? Can results be returned from calls to individual handlers of a script/script objects? Or from individual commands or property access attempts sent to an application? Moreover, is it possible to script Squeak objects with AppleScript? Apparently, Apple has implemented hooks in it's version of Java so that one can script Java applications. In a similar manner, I was wondering if it were possible to script Squeak projects or objects with compiled AppleScripts? In other words, communicate with the squeak environment from outside using AppleScript? Thanks, Anthony __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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[ANN] TestRunnerEnhancements-nk 1.8 updated on SqueakMap
by Ned Konz 01 May '03

01 May '03

Version 1.8 fixes the problem with the duplication of the progress morph upon collapse and expand of the TestRunner window. -- Ned Konz http://bike-nomad.com GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE

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[BUG] in TestRunnerEnh-nk
by diegogomezdeck＠consultar.com 01 May '03

01 May '03

Hi, Steps: 1) open test runner 2) run a couple of tests 3) collapse the runner window 4) un-colapse the window The progress morph appears again. In fact, one progress morph per run appears. Cheers, Diego

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Re: [Q] Version Control with Squeak was [Q] Fiddling with system innards
by Anthony Adachi 01 May '03

01 May '03

Avi Bryant wrote: > For more info on one way this gets done, see: > http://beta4.com/squeak/aubergines/docs/dvs.html Thanks for the link, Anthony __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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[Q] ProgressMorph cleanup
by diegogomezdeck＠consultar.com 01 May '03

01 May '03

Hi, Waiting for the changes for progress notification I'll start to change the look of ProgressMorph. Reading the code I found thet ProgressMorph is using FlashProgressMorph. I propose to create a ProgressBarMorph (using the code on FlashProgressMorph). Then I can change FlashProgressMorph to be a subclass of ProgressBarMorph or just delete FlashProgressMorph (and use ProgressBarMorph). I'll produce 2 changesets: one with the refactoring I'm talking about and the second one with the look changes. Do you agree? Diego

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