Squeak-dev March 2006

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177 participants
255 discussions

[MC] Class defs
by Bert Freudenberg 22 Mar '06

22 Mar '06

Wouldn't it be better if all the class definitions were loaded first before all methods? I get loads of Undeclared variables while loading multiple packages (Magma in this case). It all works, but is a bit unexpected. Looks like the definitions are only sorted for dependencies, but not by their sortKey. Is this intentional? - Bert -

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Fast paced and impressive DabbleDB Video online
by Markus Gaelli 22 Mar '06

22 Mar '06

http://dabbledb.com/utr/ Thanks Avi and Andrew. Good luck with that killer app! Cheers, Markus

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Morphic as a model...
by blake＠kingdomrpg.com 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Hey, Squeakers: I'm at a new place of work where every Tuesday we do a seminar on a programming concept of some sort. (They've been doing a lot on patterns.) Our flagship product is a tool for manipulating and presenting medical data (flow cytometry data, in fact) and has a lot of the tactile functionality of morphic. In other words, object can be resized and moved and edited, not rotated but I think that's planned. I was thinking of presenting Morphic as a direction the interface could possibly emulate and wondered if anyone had thoughts on that. I know Morphic is being replaced by Tweak (or is Morphic going to be rebuilt on top of Tweak?) and wondered what sort of philosophies/experiences had accumulated around its use. ===Blake===

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Strange PasteUpMorph>>drawOn:
by Hilaire Fernandes 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

I found this method a bit strange. As it is showed by its code sample below, grid will be rendered only if gridding is on. Do I miss something? --- (self griddingOn and: [self gridVisible]) ifTrue: [aCanvas fillRectangle: self bounds [...] --- Hilaire

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Exception Handling
by Zulq Alam 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Hello, I'm a bit confused about exception handling, perhaps you can help please? If I have a method #foo and #foo can signal two errors FooError and UnrelatedToFooError how do I handle both errors using #on:do: without having something like... [someObject foo] on: Error do: [:error | (error class = FooError) ifTrue: ["do something specific to FooError"]. (error class = UnrelatedToFooError) ifTrue: ["do something specific to UnrelatedToFooError"]]. In Java I would do something like try { somObject.foo(); } catch (FooError e) { // do something specific to FooError } catch (UnrelatedToFooError e) { // do something specific to UnrelatedToFooError } Even if under the hood the same is happening this seems to take care of some very common code. Is there something in Smalltalk/Squeak will provide something similar? Thanks, Zulq.

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Morphic error
by Marcus Pedersén 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Hi! I have made a small app with buttons, textfields and a "clock". Quite often I get an error that says that one of my morphs ( different morphs from time to time) do not handle mouseOver: evt. I am suspecting that I updates my different morphs with same type of message. World doOneCycleNow is the problem. For instance I update my clock with World doOneCycleNow every second. Is there a better way to just update a specific morph? Or am I on the wrong track with my error, is there something else that can make my GUI throw this exception? Please help me on where to start looking! Many thanks in advance! Regards Marcus

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Re: Metaclass issues.
by Michael van der Gulik 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Thanks, Alan (and Colin). And thanks for the warning, too! I've already learned to save my image *before* running any tests! Michael. Alan Lovejoy wrote: > Michael: > > You will find that your new Metaclass ("m,") although it has a > MethodDictionary and a superclass, does not have the right MethodDictionary > or superclass to actually create any instances. That's why the code in > ClassBuilder does the following: > > privateNewSubclassOf: newSuper > "Create a new meta and non-meta subclass of newSuper" > "WARNING: This method does not preserve the superclass/subclass > invariant!" > | newSuperMeta newMeta | > newSuperMeta := newSuper ifNil:[Class] ifNotNil:[newSuper class]. > newMeta := Metaclass new. > newMeta > superclass: newSuperMeta > methodDictionary: MethodDictionary new > format: newSuperMeta format. > ^newMeta new > > If you provided the new Metaclass with a MethodDictionary with the right > CompiledMethods in it, you wouldn't need to give it a superclass. But the > usual practice is to make the superclass of a Metaclass instance be either > Class (which is an instance of an instance of Metaclass) or else some other > already-provisioned Metaclass instance. > > Be forewarned: You're dealing with the "moebius strip" of Smalltalk's > class-metaclass metamodel, and it's easy to get yourself very confused. > Careful thought will be required to avoid error. > > Note: The class of Metaclass is 'Metaclass class,' and the class of > 'Metaclass class' is Metaclass. This provides the transitive closure of > Smalltalk's metamodel. The superclass of a root class is nil, the > superclass of the metaclass of a root class should normally be Class, so > that the instance of the metaclass instance (a root class) will inherit > "Class behavior" from Class itself. > > --Alan > > -----Original Message----- > From: squeak-dev-bounces(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org > [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Michael > van der Gulik > Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2006 1:35 PM > To: squeak-dev(a)lists.squeakfoundation.org > Subject: Metaclass issues. > > Hi all. > > I've found myself in the unfortunate position of needing to work with > Metaclasses for my own project! > > I'll spare the details; you can email me directly if you want them :-). > Why does the following happen?: > > m := Metaclass new. " Construct the Metaclass instance for my new class" > c := m new. "Make my new class". > > The code will evaluate fine, but if you try to do anything with c, CPU usage > hits 100% and I can't seem to break out of it. > > Ideas? I suspect it is something like m not being initialised properly with > a superclass etc. I'm taking my inspiration from > ClassBuilder>>privateNewSubclassOf:. > > Michael. > > > > >

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performance 3.8 vs. 3.9a
by Marcus Denker 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

Hi, To me, 3.9a feels a little bit snappier than 3.8... (thanks to a lot of work by a lot of people, Eddie Cottongim I think did many of the big-gain changesets). So here is the benchmark again that opens 5*10 browsers on #abandonSources. This, of course, is an "apples vs. oranges" benchmark... e.g. there are many more systemcategories and classes in 3.9 than in 3.8... and early version don't render TrueType fonts for the window title. But in the end, we just want to open a Browser, and that should not take a too long. 3.5 5021.4 3.6 5282.2 3.7: 8838.4 3.8: 12010.8 3.9a: 7648.0 (Powerbook 1.5Ghz, all 32bit color, same vm) So at least, the trend of the "ever slower Squeak" has been stopped. 1.57 times faster then 3.8, faster then 3.7... but slower then 3.6. Nevertheless, not too bad, as a start. Marcus Code: (Dan's 10-Browser benchmark): ---------------------------------------------------- time _ 0. saveMorphs _ self currentWorld submorphs. 5 timesRepeat:[ self currentWorld removeAllMorphs. "heh, heh" time _ time + (Time millisecondsToRun: [ 1 to: 10 do: [:i | Browser fullOnClass: SystemDictionary selector: #abandonSources]. self currentWorld submorphs do: [:m | m delete. self currentWorld doOneCycle]]). ]. self currentWorld addAllMorphs: saveMorphs. time/5 asFloat "print it"

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[Goody] NuBlt
by Eddie Cottongim 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

As some know, I spent some time looking into how to do the fastest blts possible. The motivation for this was that the LookEnhancements in 3.9 put a heavy load on BitBlt for things like window resizing and other common things that people expect to be very fluid. The result was a promising architecture, but I ran out of steam on this after getting it to a 'first demo' stage. It runs from within squeak, at 1 and 32 bit depths, on rules 3 and 25 (the most common), but not as a drop-in replacement. The prospect of getting it to work with the many modes of operation that Squeak's bitblt has scared me off for now, but it should be possible. The demonstrated performance gain for the supported modes ranges from 1.3x to 14x. Most of the performance opportunities exist in color conversions; Squeak's bitblt is fairly close to optimal when no conversion is needed. Color conversion was also one thing I never completely figured out, and I was worried that my highly specific color conversion routines would not offer the flexibility that Squeak's mechanism offers. I wanted to make this available in case anyone is interested. I also thank all the people on IRC that put up with my questions. A brief description, as well as source code files, are located here. http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5845 Eddie

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[3.9] Invisible method, missing changeset, backporting?
by Bert Freudenberg 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

I just downloaded 3.9a-7013 to have a look at Adrian's MC speed-up that Marcus put into 3.9a - thanks for finding this :) However, when browsing around, it's a bit hard to follow what changed how, and there are some inconsistencies: - the speed-up comes from the new category/basicCategory in Class - introduced in 7012updateFromMC, which loaded ScriptLoader-md.153, which resulted in changeset MC36 (*). - however, Class>>category and Class>>category: are not in that (nor any) changeset - more worryingly, Class>>category: is invisible in the SystemBrowser, because it is not in any method category. - it might be a good idea to run a consistency check on the whole system to make sure all methods in the method dicts are also categorized - there is no history on Class>>category, is that because it moved from ClassDescription (where it was in 3.8)? What would be needed to backport this speed-up to 3.8(.1)? How did this change get into the system? Why wasn't it recorded in a changeset? - Bert - (*) I added a MCVersionLoader>>loadWithNameLike: method in Monticello- bf.279.mcz (http://source.impara.de/mc.html) which could be used to have a more meaningful name than "MC36"

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