Squeak-dev February 2008

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159 participants
219 discussions

Delay time question
by Robert F. Scheer 03 Mar '08

03 Mar '08

I compared with Jon Hylands and discovered a big difference between my Ubuntu and his Windows results. Time millisecondsToRun: [10 timesRepeat: [(Delay forMilliseconds: 1000) wait]] 10015 Time millisecondsToRun: [100 timesRepeat: [(Delay forMilliseconds: 100) wait]] 10015 Time millisecondsToRun: [1000 timesRepeat: [(Delay forMilliseconds: 10) wait]] 13405 Time millisecondsToRun: [10000 timesRepeat: [(Delay forMilliseconds: 1) wait]] 45728 He did the third test and got something like 10250 instead of my 13405. Is this behavior well-known and understood or is there something wrong with my install? Thanks for any help. It's a big problem for my robot (and therefore me) at the moment. - Robert

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[Patch] Class>>#bindingOf: with inheritance priority over Smalltalk global variables
by Klaus D. Witzel 01 Mar '08

01 Mar '08

I want to give priority of a class' hierarchy's bindings over that of (self environment) when the latter defaults to the Smalltalk global dictionary (as is the case today in most images). Attached is a patch which supports SharedPool as it was introduced in - http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2003-May/058391.html But with the patch the scope of global variables is now as follows: 1] classPool 2] sharedPools 3] environment if ~~ Smalltalk 4] superclass 5] Smalltalk (or equivalently, nil environment) Without the patch and as is today, item 5] takes precedence over the superclass hierarchy item 4] whenever (aClass environment == Smalltalk) is the default. With the patch inheritance has priority. It can for example be made possible to "shadow" any global variable by using a SharedPool and class initialization code, and that is now inherited. Feedback is appreciated; also if you want see the patch in the next release. /Klaus

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MPEG plugin
by Steven W Riggins 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

Is anyone using the MPEG plugin for mp3 files? We're noticing it lies in determining the duration, in samples, of a file. I went perusing through the plugin source and found: result = (long)((float)mpeg3demuxer_total_bytes(audio- >astream->demuxer) / audio->avg_framesize * audio->samples_per_frame); It seems that using an average frame size to calculate the # of samples is fraught with error, no? Of course, this totally breaks all of code that plays from point A to point B, tries to keep the video in sync on scrubbing, etc, as we're using the audio samples to determine the duration of the file. There does not seem to be another api in the plugin for returning the duration. Thanks! Steve

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Closing a socket for port re-use - dumb question
by Bill Schwab 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

Hello all, Slightly OT, except that I am asking for the potential benefit of Squeak. Several years ago, I had problems with closing a server socket such that same service could be restarted on the same port. There must be a correct way to do this (too many products do it successfully for it to be a problem), but at the time I was told that ephemeral ("dynamically allocated") ports were the best solution. I got it working, but have regretted it due to fire walls and other criteria. Can anyone point me to what I might have been doing wrong, and/or an example of how to do it correctly? Of course, stress testing start/stop of a Seaside server could be a nice place to start to verify that it is not a problem. However, I would ideally like to understand the problem so I won't walk into it again. Perhaps it was just a Windows bug??? Thanks, Bill Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D. University of Florida Department of Anesthesiology PO Box 100254 Gainesville, FL 32610-0254 Email: bschwab(a)anest.ufl.edu Tel: (352) 846-1285 FAX: (352) 392-7029

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tim's answers to the 2008 candidate questions
by tim Rowledge 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

> 1. Approximately, how much time do you plan on spending on Squeak > during the coming year (in any kind of unit)? I'm fortunate in that my work situation allows me to work at home doing pretty much as I please with my time. This means I can spend time on Squeak when I have something useful to do and nothing more urgent claims my attention. I'd hazard a guess that it might average out to a day a week. > 2. What are in your mind the three most important issues (not > necessarily technical) we need to address in the coming year? a) finish the relicensing effort so it is finally complete, done, finito, out of the way, never to be let into the light of day again. b) get the membership of the SFLC completed so we have a safe 'home' and banking setup for the future c) make the commitment to start on a new base image, taking what is good, dumping anything below par, with actual design discussions, documentation and comments > 3. What is your view on fund raising and how any such collected money > should be dealt with? I'm in two minds on the issue. I have no experience on fund raising whatsoever and, like Dan, have benefited throughout my life from a gentle rainfall of money from mysterious forces above. I'm not sure that a squeak foundation *needs* much in the way of fund raising to operate perfectly well; enough to keep servers alive etc is plenty for that. However, *if* there is a practical way to raise large amounts of money for specific projects then one could imagine plans that would take many millions of dollars. I'm good at spending large amounts of money. > 4. What is your view on the ongoing process of making SqueakFoundation > a not-for-profit legal entity? It's been slow and somewhat painful but that is what happens when you are depending upon the unpaid work of a few people at both ends of the process. We're getting there, it should be continued and completed. Everyone owes Craig a big thank-you for his work on this, by the way. > 5. Do you think the Team model is appropriate for organising our > efforts or should we come up with something else? Teams are the only way anything gets done. Occasionally it's a team of one but normally I claim you need someone with the drive and idea and at least one other that has the patience, doggedness and sheer bloody- mindedness to not let things drift or stop. Given that people like that will get on and do things anyway, how can it not be smart to accept the world and work with it? One problem I see is that we currently have a lot of people with ideas in particular areas but few with really broad scope; that was/is I think one of the important qualities of Alan Kay that helped to make Smalltalk possible in the first place. > 6. Do you have any specific views on how the Squeak board and the > Squeak community should work together with the Squeak satellite > communities (Croquet, Seaside, Sophie, Squeakland, Scratch etc), also > referred to as "stakeholder communities"? Only that stakeholders must work together if they want to benefit. "United we run, divided we SIGHALT", or something like that. We must fight back the ravening hordes of java-weenies, rubettes, perly- queens, CLOSeted lispers etc. > 7. The squeak.org release is our most important asset. How do you see > it evolving over the next few years? I disagree with both ends of that sentence. I think the community of skilled and involved people is the great asset and I want to see the software system go through revolution, not evolution. Software might be the only place in the universe where 'Intelligent Design' has any validity. > 8. Do you have any thoughts on the current relicensing effort? See 4 above. We do still have a problem with establishing that work coming from Disney & HP actually acceptable to the SFLC legal team. Lawyers like paper. > 9. How would you like Squeak to be positioned in the open source world > in year 2012? I don't give stuff about 'the open source world'. That's as meaningless to me as 'where would I like squeak to be positioned in the christian world'. > 10. What do you see as the overall role of the board? Right now, trying to make a proper legal and operational foundation. Later, using that to provide support for the *real* work - making better software. tim -- tim Rowledge; tim(a)rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Useful random insult:- An 8086 in a StrongARM environment.

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Election 2008: Answers from Matthew
by Matthew Fulmer 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

I posted my campaign platform. Read it first: http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/81.html > 1. Approximately, how much time do you plan on spending on > Squeak during the coming year (in any kind of unit)? I am currently spending 1-2 hours per day in hobby work for squeak, and 3-5 hours per day on weekends. That would include my board work. I can keep up this schedule at least until August 2008, when I start grad school. > 2. What are in your mind the three most important issues (not > necessarily technical) we need to address in the coming year? 1. establish forums for the sharing of code and ideas between our various sub-groups 2. establish a spec for the release 3. finish the relicense See my platform article for details: http://people.squeakfoundation.org/article/81.html > 3. What is your view on fund raising and how any such collected > money should be dealt with? I've never dealt with fund raising. I would say we should hire someone full-time to work on the release. > 4. What is your view on the ongoing process of making > SqueakFoundation a not-for-profit legal entity? I don't really get the point, but it seems like a good idea to smarter people than I, so I'm all for it. Maybe I'll understand it more once it is done. > 5. Do you think the Team model is appropriate for organising our > efforts or should we come up with something else? I said in my article, I think the team model is very good, but it suffers from idealism: We haven't yet seen a successful, organized team that can act as a role-model for how the rest of the teams should work. Bootstrapping a successful release team should be a top priority of the board's, for two reasons: - Get people excited and make a plan so that volunteers will know what needs to be done - Show people how to organize and run a successful team > 6. Do you have any specific views on how the Squeak board and > the Squeak community should work together with the Squeak > satellite communities (Croquet, Seaside, Sophie, Squeakland, > Scratch etc), also referred to as "stakeholder communities"? I think the release team should package up bug fixes for all the forks of squeak, letting them know we don't consider them "second class citizens" as opposed to squeak.org and squeak-dev. Andreas and Yoshiki have both said that a merger would be a bad idea, so, let's stop pressing the idea of relocating them on top of a minimal image. It ain't gonna happen. Let's build roads, not move mountains. > 7. The squeak.org release is our most important asset. How do > you see it evolving over the next few years? I don't see it evolving at all unless we write a spec on what it should look like in the future, then make a schedule on how to get there. > 8. Do you have any thoughts on the current relicensing effort? I'm glad Craig made all the effort he has on that front and left so little for us to do. Thank you Craig. Finishing this effort will require the creation of an organized release team to carry out the kernel audit and rewrite. > 9. How would you like Squeak to be positioned in the open source > world in year 2012? Randal and Seaside are bringing in developers, and if we get a good release ready for them before they arrive en masse, we could really make Squeak a respectable system. If not, we will still continue to be one of the best education tools that the world has ever seen. > 10. What do you see as the overall role of the board? To make the decisions nobody wants to make, and take the blame. > 11. What actions would you take to promote Squeak as an > environment for professional software development? Pay Randal. -- Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/ Help improve Squeak Documentation: http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/808

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Re: [squeak-dev] OmniBase/Magma - how big??
by Bill Schwab 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

Göran, Can you give me a sense of what slow-ish means? Unfair, I realize, but any guesstimates with context would be greatly appreciated. Were there any particular reasons you chose Magma over OmniBase? In my case, much of what I would do first with an OODB would happen on Dolphin, which AFAICT favors OmniBase. Bill ============================ >From the Gjallar project we can report that Magma works really nice. We have had perhaps 2-3 buglets and Chris fixed them all quickly and promptly. IIRC they were related mainly to the query stuff which Chris pushed out fast because of our popular demand - so he was definitely not to blame. :) Generally I would say that the only "issue" we had was slow(ish) read performance. So if you write an "interactive" application with Magma you need to take two things into account: 1. Since Magma is an ODB it builds a cache of objects into your session. So when/if the session is cold you get punished with load times. But when it is hot they are zero. Essentially what this means in Gjallar is that when a user logs in things will take a bit of time the first time she does something. But from then on things go much faster and since a Gjallar user typically is logged in for a long time - typically all day - it works fine. 2. Even with a warm session (with lots of cached objects) you can still get punished with longish load times. This can be remedied a LOT with setting up good read strategies. IMHO I think Magma would SHINE if we somehow could boost the serialization/deserialization mechanism in it. Because I suspect this is where the bottleneck is regarding the above. An Exuperified Magma could be the answer - or some other HARD approach - I dunno. Chris? regards, Göran Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D. University of Florida Department of Anesthesiology PO Box 100254 Gainesville, FL 32610-0254 Email: bschwab(a)anest.ufl.edu Tel: (352) 846-1285 FAX: (352) 392-7029

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Craig's answers to the 2008 candidate questions
by Craig Latta 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

Hi all-- > 1. Approximately, how much time do you plan on spending on Squeak > during the coming year (in any kind of unit)? I plan to spend Mondays on Squeak for the indefinite future (I was able to start doing this in mid-February 2008). A year of weekly eight-hour days is about 400 hours, or about ten full-time weeks. The work I do for my primary client the rest of each week is also with Squeak, so there may be some overlap there. > 2. What are in your mind the three most important issues (not > necessarily technical) we need to address in the coming year? - Producing a release composed entirely of appropriately-licensed material (this will enable our membership in the Software Freedom Conservancy, and in turn the ability to receive tax-exempt donations, which could fund a great deal of important effort). - Improving the modularity of our system. - Spreading the word about Squeak in the media and at conferences. > 3. What is your view on fund raising and how any such collected money > should be dealt with? I think we should be receiving tax-exempt donations (see previous answer). The elected leadership should decide how to spend all such money, reporting all expenditures to the community and delegating spending decisions as it sees fit (e.g., it may decide to allocate some money to a team with its own reported budget). > 4. What is your view on the ongoing process of making SqueakFoundation > a not-for-profit legal entity? What the leadership elected in 2007 is attempting is membership for the Squeak project in the Software Freedom Conservancy. The Conservancy will be the legal entity, but the Squeak project will gain many of the benefits of that status (please see the Conservancy's website[1] for details). I think being able to receive tax-exempt donations is vital to our goals as a community. With it we can pursue development, documentation, and advocacy far more effectively. Conservancy membership remains our best option for being able to receive tax-exempt donations. There is a stark tradeoff here between waiting and spending money. Joining the Conservancy is taking so long because our membership is contingent upon a Squeak release composed only of appropriately-licensed content. This requires obtaining license agreements from many contributors. While establishing an independent entity might lessen that burden, it would require personal investments of time and money that we are not willing to make. > 5. Do you think the Team model is appropriate for organising our > efforts or should we come up with something else? I do think the team model is appropriate. It's simple and clear, and works to the extent that the participants have time to spend. No rearrangement of policy is going to create free time for anyone (sadly :). If we're not meeting our goals for a role, then people who think they can do a better job need to volunteer. I think that's simply the nature of volunteer work. > 6. Do you have any specific views on how the Squeak board and the > Squeak community should work together with the Squeak satellite > communities (Croquet, Seaside, Sophie, Squeakland, Scratch etc), also > referred to as "stakeholder communities"? These groups should communicate their desires and constraints to each other early and often. > 7. The squeak.org release is our most important asset. How do you see > it evolving over the next few years? The release is our most important artifact, but the community itself is our most important asset. At any rate, I see the release moving to a clearly minimal kernel with a system for extension while maintaining modularity. I see the behavior we're using now organized into intelligible modules, and flexibly loadable from local or remote peers. I see a system which a newcomer can start exploring and reusing immediately, experiencing competency in a day. > 8. Do you have any thoughts on the current relicensing effort? It is well worth finishing, and I'll be very glad when it's done. > 9. How would you like Squeak to be positioned in the open source world > in year 2012? I'll be very happy if the open-source world sees Squeak as a familiar, reasonable alternative for software projects of any size. > 10. What do you see as the overall role of the board? The Squeak leadership should represent the project to the Conservancy, act as the authoritative decision-making body for the community, and delegate responsibility to capable and motivated participants who can commit the necessary time. thanks! -C [1] http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org -- Craig Latta improvisational musical informaticist www.netjam.org Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

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Re: [squeak-dev] 3.10 Dev - Unable to load VMMaker 3.8b6.1 from Universes
by Ken G. Brown 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

At 4:00 AM -0800 2/29/08, squeak-dev-request(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org apparently wrote: >Date: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:30:37 +0100 >From: "Damien Cassou" <damien.cassou(a)gmail.com> >Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] 3.10 Dev - Unable to load VMMaker 3.8b6.1 > from Universes >To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" > <squeak-dev(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org> >Message-ID: > <6ac749c10802290230n69851955qaeb2c93e3dfc4481(a)mail.gmail.com> >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > >Hi Ken, > >On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 9:13 PM, Ken G. Brown <kbrown(a)mac.com> wrote: >> Mantis <http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=6965> >> > > In a fresh sq3.10-7159dev08.02.1 when attempting to load VMMaker 3.8b6.1 via Universes (Enhanced), a dialog comes up saying 'Some important packages with be installed. All OmniBrowser based tools will be closed. Are you ready? > >If you see that, it's because you clicked on 'select upgrades'. Since >there were some OmniBrowser newer versions on the universes, they have >been selected for installation. Ok, that would explain it. I don't recall clicking 'select upgrades' but most likely then somehow it got done, perhaps since VMMaker showed up right at the bottom of the middle pane near the button. Now trying again, in a fresh sq3.10-7159dev08.02.1 when I very carefully only do the following: - Open Universe Browser (enhanced), - then do 'update list from network' (I see the progress indicator), - then select VMMaker 3.8b6.1, (some descriptive text shows up) - then 'install selection', nothing happens at all. Ken G. Brown > If you only want to install FFI, just >click on 'update list from network' and then select FFI. If FFI does >not install, I can't help you, you have to talk to the maintainer. > >Bye > >-- >Damien Cassou

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Re: [Etoys] [Fix] Horizontal and Vertical Flips
by K. K. Subramaniam 29 Feb '08

29 Feb '08

On Friday 29 February 2008 8:34:42 am Scott Wallace wrote: > Hi, Subbu, .. > As before, if "flip" or "tumble" is applied to a SketchMorph which has > been *rotated*, there are surprising and (nearly) unpredictable visual > results. > I think (maybe) people would expect that sending "flip" to an objet > seen on the screen, whether or not the object had previously been > rotated, would horizontally flip the bits of *as seen on the screen* > -- not the bits of a different, unseen, "original form". A SketchMorph is live object that can move around in the screen. I interpreted flip as a message I would send to the morph - i.e. flip around *its own* vertical axis. > So, arguably, we should incorporate your code in etoys3.0...? > However, having waited this long, let's wait just a little while > longer, in case anyone cares to try his hand at an implementation that > gives what I suggest to be the more intuitive result for sketches that > have been rotated and resized, and/or, more ambitiously, for sketches > which have embedded submorphs. > > In hopes of stirring up a little more conversation on this ... It sure needs more discussion. Perhaps MorphicObject (an assembly of objects with state/behavior/shape) could be factored out from Morph (a wrapper form associated with a morphic object that can be transformed and painted on a canvas). Subbu

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