Squeak-dev June 1999

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139 participants
408 discussions

Re: Documentation... (was Re: Article in Wired)
by Peter Smet 07 Jun '99

07 Jun '99

Perhaps we could pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps here and use dandelion to produce a nice HTML formatted class hierachy. This could constitute a make-shift reference manual. I agree the html document would still need comments and examples, but it's a good start. Peter >I think it may be worthwhile to stop madly coding for one or two weeks and >just comment all the classes you've all designed. It would probably >improve coding efficiency since most coders will not know the entire Squeak >hierarchy and may need to use something they have never encountered >before. Although they could probably just study the code and figure it >out, it would probably be a whole lot easier with a simple example that >describes the operation in detail. > >(I've gotta start commenting my classes too! :) > >-- Dino > >

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Re: Article in Wired
by Ashley George Taylor 07 Jun '99

07 Jun '99

> So, in anticipation of the new raft of newbies this is bound to > engender, let's polish up the help pages and welcome them to the > world of real computing. Its time -- what can we do to help? I think the lack of documentation for Squeak seriously hampers widespread use. The newbie tutorial is a step in the right direction, but support for moving up to the next level of profiency is sparse. A look at the number of classes with no comments shows this, and it is entirely beyond me that most established, central Morphic classes which must have taken some time to think about and write are uncommented, lacking even 5 minutes worth of comments. Looking at the demo classes does not always give the information needed, and in any case, examples are supposed to supplement basic documentation. It would be so nice if a definite decision was taken to deal with this problem, even at the expense of more neat things being added in the next version. As a matter of fact, a change set with basic comments for some of the Morphic classes would be welcome ASAP. The lack of documentation is the most frequent complaint from students in the OOD/squeak class for which I am a TA, followed by by UI and colour scheme grumblings. -Ashley George Taylor (ataylor(a)cc.gatech.edu)

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[BUG]SelectorBrowser (selector finder) doesn't find == or -> methods
by Mark A. Schwenk 07 Jun '99

07 Jun '99

I haven't had a chance to investigate a fix, but I noticed today that the selector finder does not find any methods when I enter == as the search string. It also failed to find any methods with -> as the search string. -Mark Schwenk WellThot Inc.

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Re: Article in Wired
by Bob Arning 06 Jun '99

06 Jun '99

On Sun, 06 Jun 1999 14:46:22 -0400 Dino <gte949e(a)prism.gatech.edu> wrote: >heheh... text-wrapping manipulation features? odd.... Where in Squeak >did they get that idea? Play With Me - 5, e.g. Cheers, Bob

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Article in Wired
by Andrew C. Greenberg 06 Jun '99

06 Jun '99

The July 1999 Wired has a brief piece on Squeak on page 158, entitled "Exquisite Computing." Missing the point entirely as the media so often does, the article observes that Squeak has "text-wrapping and manipulation features that would make PageMaker green with envy." But hey, the piece, at least, has a screen shot and encourages folks to visit http://www.squeak.org. Just so long as they spell our name right. So, in anticipation of the new raft of newbies this is bound to engender, let's polish up the help pages and welcome them to the world of real computing. Its time -- what can we do to help?

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Some questions about Morph & Squeak
by Giovanni Giorgi 06 Jun '99

06 Jun '99

Excuse me, I'd like to know if there is a tutorial on the Morph GUI. I have some difficult to use the SystemWindow class. I try to use it, but I have a little problem. I open a SystemWindow, fill it with my buttons, and lik it to my class-model. But when I try to minimize it, the Window disapper!! I suppose i am doing something wron. Exactly, what is the right way to use SystemWindow(s)? I must have a Model, a View and a Controller? I can do it with a single class, which is set as the model of the SystemWindow? I do so, but I think something wrong.... The second question is very simple: Squeak code blocks have temp. variables? For example, in VW or VA I can write something like: aBool rue:[ |a b| a:= NiceClass new. b:= a printString ]. This generate an error under Squeak. I must convert some old code from VW, whith temp variables!! /// Giovanni Giorgi --- e-mail: giorgi_g(a)geocities.com __ /// Computer Science, Systems, and Communication Dept. \\\/// Universita' di Milano Bicocca - Milan, Italy \\// http://www.mars.sal.disco.unimi.it/~giorgi

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Re: Hacking Squeak With Apple MPW
by Tim Olson 06 Jun '99

06 Jun '99

>For those who do not have, or are not inclined to work with >CodeWarrior, Apple Computer distributes free (as in beer) a high-end, >high-quality professional development system including Motorola's >highly optimizing MrC compiler. Just a clarification, here -- MrC is not Motorola's C compiler; it was developed in-house at Apple. Motorola's C compiler for PowerPC exists as a "plugin" for MPW and CodeWarrior. -- tim

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Lobbying for smalltalk -from comp.lang.smalltalk
by Peter Smet 04 Jun '99

04 Jun '99

Stephan, [stuff about increasing Smalltalk's public profile snipped] These are all excellent points. I would like to add one more. The visibility of Smalltalk would be hugely increased by an 'open source killer app' If Sendmail, Apache, or Netscape had been written using Smalltalk, a lot more people would have heard of the language and considered using it. Actions often speak louder than words, although I agree we need both. At university it frustrates me that the lecturers all feel they have to include a section on Smalltalk, but normally in a historical context. "Smalltalk, well no-one uses it" was one notable quote. With programming languages, mindshare is everything. It's difficult to explain this in a few short lines, but the principle of 'emergent properties' applies. Richard Gabriel has argued similarly in the context of c and Lisp. This basically says that a language is a bit like a virus. It doesn't matter how bad a language is, if you can get enough people using it, the language will 'improve itself'. This happens directly as a function of the number of users. The fundamental prerequisite is that the virus must propagate itself simply and easily, and this is where Smalltalk has fallen down in the past. With cheap and free Smalltalks now plentiful, things are better. If Smalltalk is to become a more effective 'virus', programs must be able to be passed along and replicated without a 5-10 MB image. A virus is only as plentiful as the number of hosts it can infect. Practically, this will mean users should be able to hack together small utility programs and pass them along and run them without moving Megabytes across the network. I suspect Smalltalk makes an excellent 'Web Glue' along the lines of Perl, but as you say, it is essential to increase the user base. Peter

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RE: Debugger bugged ?
by agree＠carltonfields.com 03 Jun '99

03 Jun '99

It has worked just great for me. Perhaps if you offered some more context? > -----Original Message----- > From: MIME :pierre@limbo.create.ucsb.edu > Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 1999 1:08 PM > To: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu > Subject: Debugger bugged ? > > > I have lots of "simulated message XXX not understood", especially with > XXX = '<' > when I use the debugger (either with the step or send commands). > > Does anyone else have the same problem ? > > > >

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Error in SqueakV2.sources?
by Jim Menard 03 Jun '99

03 Jun '99

I seem to have found a problem with SqueakV2.sources. I installed a vanilla Squeak 2.4b on my Mac by downloading the whole package. I noticed that the first N characters were chopped off from all method source and class comments, starting after class Character. After looking at the file SqueakV2.sources, I inserted a single '!' that seems to be missing after the CharacterBlock class comment. That seems to fix everything a few classes after Character, but there is still a problem. CharacterBlock doesn't show up in the browser, and CharacterSet's class comment and methods display the same problem (the beginning of the comment is chopped off). First, am I the only person with this problem? Second, what's the best way to fix it? I don't want to go around in SqueakV2.sources and randomly add '!' all over the place. Jim ======== Rectangle subclass: #CharacterBlock instanceVariableNames: 'stringIndex text textLine ' classVariableNames: '' poolDictionaries: 'TextConstants ' category: 'Graphics-Support'! !CharacterBlock commentStamp: 'di 5/22/1998 16:32' prior: 0! CharacterBlock comment: 'My instances contain information about displayed characters. They are used to return the results of methods: Paragraph characterBlockAtPoint: aPoint and Paragraph characterBlockForIndex: stringIndex. Any recomposition or movement of a Paragraph can make the instance obsolete.'! ! !CharacterBlock methodsFor: 'accessing'! stringIndex "Answer the position of the receiver in the string it indexes." ^stringIndex! ! ======== -- Jim Menard jimm(a)io.com http://www.io.com/~jimm/ BeOS developer #1283 "If at first you don't succeed, don't go skydiving." -- Unknown

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