Squeak-dev September 2004

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150 participants
437 discussions

Post fixes on Mantis?
by Ben Schroeder 03 Oct '04

03 Oct '04

Hi everyone, When looking at Mantis today, I noticed a bug report (having to do with Squeak's date parsing) and worked up a fix. I wasn't sure whether to post the fix here, using the BFAV tags, or whether to post it on Mantis. Where should we be sending such things? I have already attached my changeset to the Mantis report, but would be happy to post it here also if that is appropriate. Thanks, Ben Schroeder

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[BUG] Conversion of String to Number don't check negatives
by Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene 02 Oct '04

02 Oct '04

I wonder how long exists serious bug like this. Open Workspace. Type something like. '-94' asInteger Inspect it, and see Edgar

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[ANN] Bits of History, Words of Advices available...
by stéphane ducasse 02 Oct '04

02 Oct '04

Hi lucky guys, Please distribute widely. I imagine that this will break the market of certain second-hand book sellers but I want to thanks Glenn Grasner to let us reading freely Bits of History, Words of Advices alias the Green book. http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/FreeBooks.html Stef I want to thanks Marcus that contacted this cool german company that took our money but that saves our time :). I cleaned the pdf, but I did not dare do it with the word document :). However I put also the word document. If someone wants I think that by simply removing some files that have been put in while they should not, we could have a pdf version that can be searchable (I can try to produce the pdf if you send me the doc files). Only 10 pages have been introduced in the wrong place. Prof. Stéphane DUCASSE [ | ] http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/ "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do different? ... especially if, by doing something different, today might not be your last day on earth" Calvin&Hobbes Open Source Smalltalks: http://www.squeak.org, http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/smalltalk.html Free books for Universities at http://www.esug.org/sponsoring/promotionProgram.html

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Re: [FIX][BUG] Float NaN's ( retracting patch for #testNaN2 )
by Richard A. O'Keefe 02 Oct '04

02 Oct '04

"Boris Gaertner" <Boris.Gaertner(a)gmx.net> wrote: I use Squeak in Windows, with an Intel Celeron. On that platform the expressions 1.0e200 sin and 1.0e200 tan answer two different representations of NaN. which is certainly a wrong answer. The Intel documentation (IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual) says for instructions FSIN and FPTAN: <citation> The source operand must be given in radians and must be within the range -2^63 to +2^63. </citation> which is why a C compiler *MUST NOT* convert calls to sin() and tan() directly to uses of the FSIN and FPTAN instructions, unless the programmer has explicitly requested a non-standard fp mode (rather like the "-fnonstd" option of the Sun C compiler or the "-ffast-math" option of GCC. Source values outside the range -2^63 to +2^63 can be reduced to the range of the instruction by subtracting an appropriate integer multiple of 2*pi or by using the FPREM instruction with a divisor of 2*pi. See the section titled 'Pi' in Chapter 8 of the IA-32 Intel Architecture Software Developer's Manual, Volume 1, for a discussion of the proper value to use for pi in performing such reductions. Which is what someone implementing sin() and tan() in the maths library might do, yes. Although it is not the best advice. The Sun math library uses "infinite precision pi" for argument reduction. This can make testing a bit tricky as sin(3.14.......) is non-zero in the Sun library even for the representable number closest to pi. Demonstration: f% cat >sin.c #include "math.h" int main(void) { printf("%g\n", sin(M_PI)); return 0; } <EOF> f% cc sin.c -lm f% a.out 1.22465e-16 Where this _really_ matters of course is precisely for those very large argument values; using "infinite precision pi" and using the Intel recommended value will give you quite different answers. In other words: The implementor of a maths library has the permission to do whatever he thinks is suitable. No, that's not what it says. They cannot give that permission. Permission to deliver bad answers in the name of speed can only come from the language standard or the programmer who invokes the compiler.

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[BUG]Debugger error:MNU:undefinedObject>>firstSubmorph:
by karl.ramberg＠chello.se 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

I got this error and could only do a screen capture of it. I've been noticing that the emergency evaluator is popping up quite often, I have not catched the error/bug though... I attached the emergency evaluator screen shot. Karl

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Chemistry classes?
by Daniel B. Faken 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

Hello Fellow Squeakers, I'm working on some molecular-visualization stuff for Croquet. Does anyone have/know-of classes for representing Atoms/Molecules in Squeak/Smalltalk? I don't so much need something to render them (though that would be nice) as to represent them (so that I can access their coordinates, bonds, elemental properties, etc.) & manipulate them. I've looked at the 'Atomic' game and the 'Bouncing Atoms' sim, but neither of those provides any real support. Also, is anyone using Squeak for teaching Chemistry? thanks for any help! Daniel Faken

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3D acceleration.
by Alan Grimes 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

Now that I finally have some level of hardware 3D acceleration working at all on my linux computer, Istarted to look at wheather Squeak is able to access it. Attempting to toggle hardware acceleration with the menu checkbox was ineffectual. Now I have these questions: 1. On what platforms is hardware 3D acceleration supported? 2. What things need to be done to make it work on linux? My actual motovation for poking around with Squeak's 3D facilities comes from my good old AI project. The development plan which I am in the process of writing calls for a 3D environment with a very good facimilie of a physicality, implementing all of newtonian physics if not some parts of the laws of thermodynamics. The present implementation appears to be purely a rendering engine. Does anyone have any suggestions on where I should go to learn about how to add physical simulation features to the engine? I had attempted to make a posting that included some comments about a possible VM enhancement from the image itself with mixed results. I'll repeat them here because I don't think many people were able to read the earlier posting. In working on the VM, I noticed that it actually had 3 stacks instead of the two mentioned to me earlier. These include the parameters stack, the context stack, and the hardware stack. While a fair ammount of effort has gone into minimizing the use of the hardware stack, for good reason apparently, It _MIGHT_ be advantageous to attempt to combine either of the two software-managed stacks with the hardware stack for the sake of conserving registers and reducing the number of data items that need to be maintained explicitly by the VM code. I was wondering if anyone had done any work along these lines or may be able to point me to an argument that shows the current design to be superior.

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[UPDATE] please check and report problems :)
by stéphane ducasse 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

hi guys I pushed a couple of cs in the unstable stream. - Please check your your fixes are solving the problems you were fixing. - There are some pending cs with a conflicts tag by marcus or me so please have a look (I do not want to solve conflicts nor can nor is willing to push them in unstable in that state). - Please have a look at the enh were I explicit mentioned help. Stef

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[FIX] newPackageInfoFileOutForSAR
by lecteur＠zogotounga.net 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

from preamble: "Change Set: newPackageInfoFileOutForSAR Date: 15 September 2004 Author: Stephane Rollandin SARPackageDumper is not aware of the new protocol for filing out a package (it is now the responsibility of class ChangeSetPackageExporter, from PackageInfo-Exporters). this fixes the problem"!

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[BUG] Float NaN's] (reposting Boris' test for BFAV to pick up)
by David T. Lewis 01 Oct '04

01 Oct '04

----- Forwarded message from Boris Gaertner <Boris.Gaertner(a)gmx.net> ----- Delivered-To: mailman-squeak-dev(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org From: "Boris Gaertner" <Boris.Gaertner(a)gmx.net> To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" <squeak-dev(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org> Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 20:35:16 +0200 Subject: Re: [BUG] Float NaN's "stéphane ducasse" <ducasse(a)iam.unibe.ch> wrote: > hi guys > > Could one of you write a bunch of tests to record the correct behavior > and add as comment > the discussion of this email? > > Stef Attached you find a change set that contains additional tests for the class FloatTest. Comments are welcome. Greetings, Boris ----- End forwarded message -----

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