Squeak-dev February 2004

squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

175 participants
596 discussions

How to use PlotMorph?
by Kwiyi Woo 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Hello, I am pretty new to squeak and tried to use plotMorph to create some curve graph. The only tutorial I can find is at "http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2626", which tell me to try it as followings: PlotMorph test. PlotMorph test2. PlotMorph test4. PlotMorph testWithReferences. But I cannot find the methods "test", "test2" or "testWithReferences" in the PlotMorph class. How can the PlotMorph send message to them. Also I don't know how to plot a curve at specified function. Could anyone give me some suggestion for it? Thanks Kwiyi _________________________________________________________________ High-speed usersbe more efficient online with the new MSN Premium Internet Software. http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-us&page=byoa/prem&ST=1

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RE: Squeaking Homeschoolers?
by Brent Vukmer 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Hey Alan. Thanks for the reply! It's encouraging to know that you guys have been thinking about this. > -----Original Message----- > From: squeak-dev-bounces(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org > [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On > Behalf Of Alan Kay > Sent: Monday, February 02, 2004 2:01 PM > To: The general-purpose Squeak developerslist > Subject: RE: Squeaking Homeschoolers? > > > Hi Brent -- > > Yep, I disuss this a little in a parallel email. The big problem is > support at a level that will actually help parents get to a rich > enough level. >

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[ENH] Giving information on method author (name,url,email...)
by Samir Saidani 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Add in the method menu of the browser the possibility to have more info on the author : email, complete name, url, description... if such informations are available on SqueakMap. So SqueakMap is a prerequisite. Try it by open a method menu then more... then info on author. FileIn the .st first (due to a bug in SMSqueakMap2, see my precedent post, I didn't manage to make monticello take into account this extension method in SMSqueakMap2) then load the monticello package. -- Samir SAIDANI PhD Student in CS / Doctorant en informatique web : http://www.info.unicaen.fr/~saidani Universite de Caen - Laboratoire GREYC tel : 02-31-56-74-30 Equipe MAD - Campus II - 14032 Caen Cedex fax : 02-31-56-76-30

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RE: Squeaking Homeschoolers?
by Brent Vukmer 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

> > Just curious: has there been any effort to "market," so to > speak (in the > sense that one markets something free) Squeak to the homeschooling > population? (My wife and I don't have kids yet, but when we > do we plan to > homeschool. My wife taught 7th and 8th grade French for three > years, and > then went into tech support to get good pay and respect... > after she left > teaching she started researching homeschooling.) > Aaron - I haven't heard anything about folks at Viewpoints Research / Squeakland.org promoting Squeak to homeschooling folks. I agree with all the points you make, though - Squeak seems like a natural for homeschooling groups and I'm surprised it hasn't already been marketed to them.

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How to access to SqueakMap account from squeak ?
by Samir Saidani 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Hi, When I load SMSqueakMap2 in a vanilla squeak, and inspect accounts of the default SMSqueakMap, it's set to nil... I would like to now how to access to the accounts from squeak ? Thanks a lot ! Regards Samir -- Samir SAIDANI PhD Student in CS / Doctorant en informatique web : http://www.info.unicaen.fr/~saidani Universite de Caen - Laboratoire GREYC tel : 02-31-56-74-30 Equipe MAD - Campus II - 14032 Caen Cedex fax : 02-31-56-76-30

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Re: What I'd love to see in Squeak
by Lex Spoon 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Thanks, Aaron, we desperately need more people who can give thoughtful suggestions on the initial experience. All the old hats can really fly with the current interface and so we are blind to these things. Aaron Lanterman <lanterma(a)ece.gatech.edu> wrote: > 1) I'd love a read-eval-print-loop that acts like all the other > read-eval-print-loops I'm used to. There's a more efficient way: type a line and hit alt-p. If there is no selection, Squeak will select the current line automatically. Keystroke for keystroke, this is about the same as a standard repl. But anyway, I see no problem with your suggestion. If a volunteer were to code this up -- and it shouldn't take long!! -- then putting it in sounds like a good idea. There is a design elegance to Squeak's workspace as it is, in that it has the same interface as every other text window in the system, but in this case I don't think it's worth it if people are getting frustrated. By the way, people have often mentioned that they learn some great things about Squeak after watching an experienced guy for just 10 minutes. There seem to be a lot of little interface techniques in Squeak such as this one about auto-selecting the line. We should get rid of these as much as possible when they have no purpose, but in the meantime, keep in mind that Squeak is far easier to learn if you have a little bit of access to experts. The semester I taught the Squeak class, I made a special effort to spend a few minutes every class writing code in Squeak or looking things up in Squeak, so that people could see how the interface is worked by someone who is used to it. > 2) A standard multidimensional array class, built into the image, that > everyone can depend on and use in a consistent way. Squeak arrays as far > as I can tell are 1-D. (Maybe I'm confused on that and someone can help > me.) Yes, that would be wonderful. Let me reemphasize David's suggestion, tohugh, that you go look at MathMorph from the SUGAR guys in Argentina. They have a general linear algebra package. In my opinion, it is a real shame that the stuff from the SUGAR group in Argentina has stayed forked so long. Now that we have SqueakMap, it should be relatively easy to keep all those gooides updated with the current image. But no one seems to be volunteering, including notably the SUGAR folks. Did these guys all graduate or something? :) > 3) As an aside, I've sometimes wondered if it might be a good idea to give > options for alternate syntaxes, which could be translated on the fly to > standard Smalltalk syntax - people could type code in a form they're more > accustomed to, and see it translated into standard Squeak code. Then > after they get comfortable seeing that, they may start typing more and > more in standard Squeak right away. Squeak with syntactic sugar - maybe > call them "SugarSqueaks." There could be "SugarSqueakFortranStyle," > "SugarSqueakCStyle," etc. or something like that. Maybe. Hard to say. The keywords notation, I admit, is something that seems like a serious improvement and is not just being different. Try mapping it down to a C-like syntax and you will see the problem. What is the C function name for collect:thenSelect: ? The closest I've seen are Ada and Common Lisp, both of which have a short name *plus* optional named arguments to functions. This is familiar syntax, but it is much more verbose. In the end, the syntax seems small enough that people can learn it pretty quickly. The main place that the current syntax is unfortunate, I think, is for complex math formalas; they tend to get a bit larger in Smalltalk than in C or Java. But even then, I am not sure how to improve things. And in the end, no programming language around can fully match match notation, anyway. It's tempting to live with the good enough syntax for most purposes, and then possibly to design a specialized parser or other input tool for individual applications if you really need one. > Basically, the shock of the initial appearance of Smalltalk has prevented > me from seriously exploring it for over a decade. (Well, that and you > could get Turbo Pascal for the IBM PC for $99, and who knows how much a > commercial Smalltalk from ParcPlace cost back them). It cost a LOT. I hate marketing, but a good marketing group sure could have come up with a better strategy here, and Smalltalk's situation would likely be a lot different. People do not spend four digits very often on a language just to try it out; they *do* spend four digits on a language they know works well, if they are part of a major commercial effort. > So, I'm wondering how to help others get over that initial shock, so they > don't just say "what the hell is this, this looks very cryptic" and not > dig further to find the good stuff. Yah. Though also, remember that a lot of new users will be motivated to learn new stuff as long as they are seeing successes along the way. So another whole approach is to give examples like: matrix openInWorld and: simulation setAlpha: 3. simulation restart. And so on; simple commands with high power. This is how Joe the Box works, as you know. Trying to map their old concepts into Squeak is going to have some amount of pain no matter what -- it just isn't going to be exactly the same. So for new people, it seems important to focus on the new abilities that are around. Someone should do Joe the Digital Sound Wave, for ECE folks. :) -Lex

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Limited time
by goran.krampe＠bluefish.se 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Hi all! Just wanted to explain what I am doing etc, being a Guide and all - and promising lots of stuff in the TFNR before christmas. :-) We have quite a few needs currently in the Squeak community. But this is a *good* thing - there are many cool things to work on, and the future looks IMHO bright. I am glad to be a part of it all and I think things are moving in the right direction. Now - we are in an open source project. This means we have different amounts of time to spend on it. I have spent a lot of time lately to get SM2 on track. Now, it looks like that task has been more or less accomplished. Sure, there are plenty of things left to fix, but the "storm" is over. The last few days I have also spent getting the Swedish DVD translation finished. Phew. Ok, so what is next for me? I have a huge list of stuff but I think my prio - unless someone tells me otherwise - will be: 1. TFNR restart - yep, slumbering but about to get restarted damnit! :) 2. Getting an extensive amount of help in Scamper-friendly HTML into the Squeak 3.7 release. And generally doing my share of certain things regarding 3.7. 3. SM2 odds and ends 4. SM2.1 - dependencies and generally the Holy Graal. :) Well, on top of all these "concrete" things I will also participate in the how-to-proceed-with-the-community-issue and how we should move to the next step, whatever that may be. regards, Göran

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[KCP][FIX] KCP-198-Browser
by localhost＠iam.unibe.ch 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

from preamble: "Change Set: KCP-198-Browser Date: 2 February 2004 Author: stephane ducasse remove one hardecoded reference in Browser"!

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upgrading monticello
by Avi Bryant 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

I've just posted two new releases of Monticello to SM, revisions #86 and #90. Why two? Because one of the bugs fixed in release 86 is triggered by release 90 - so if you're upgrading from an earlier version, you have to upgrade to 86 *first* (fixing the bug), and then upgrade to 90 (no longer triggering it). If you try to upgrade directly from, eg, 69 to 90, you'll get an error halfway through the load and your image will be left in a horrible inconsistent state. Don't do this. (Isn't self-hosting fun?) Just loading 90 into a clean image should be fine, though. I'm mostly pushing these releases out to get this annoying double upgrade out of the way, but they do provide some benefit: - The aforementioned bug fix. The bug had to do with updates that moved inst vars from subclasses up to superclasses (or, in some cases, vice versa). These always have to be done by first removing the inst var from the old class and then adding it to the new one - if you don't do that, the ClassBuilder will complain about duplicate instance variables. New versions of Monticello handle this in a pretty rough and ready way - any class or method definitions that have errors like this when being loaded will be deferred until everything else has been loaded, and the user will then be given the option to try loading the deferred definitions again. The second time through, they should work. - Some fixes from Ned, including a repository type that lets MC raid the SqueakMap cache. - A lot of cleanup of the reader/writer classes. The barely used .mcv format is no longer supported at all, and support for .mc files has been moved to MonticelloCVS, which is now the only thing that uses it. If you're one of the few using MonticelloCVS, make sure you upgrade it at the same time. - Packages and their dependencies are now loaded as one atomic unit (as much as MC can load anything atomically), which means that you don't need to worry about ordering (you could, say, have a class in package A that subclassed one in package B and a class in package B that subclassed one in package A, and it should all load ok - not that I recommend this). There's still *lots* more work to do on the dependency mechanism, though. Avi

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How are Block Closures?
by Chris Muller 02 Feb '04

02 Feb '04

Hi! I am really looking forward to Block Closures in the stock image. I tried to give myself a preview. In the latest 3.7, I loaded SmaCC, GeneralEnh and then followed the instructions for ClosureCompiler (fixing deprecated references before loading). One thing I noticed was the image slowed down tremendously. I understand the VM needs rebuilt. For some reason, I wasn't able to load the test cases, so I tried this expression: | b | b := nil. b := [ : n | n > 0 ifTrue: [ b value: n-1 ] ifFalse: [ n ] ]. b value: 10 I couldn't seem to get it to evaluate. Oh well. The important question is, how is this effort coming along for 3.7? Thank you! Chris

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