Squeak-dev September 2007

squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

150 participants
157 discussions

Getting double semi as sequencer harvested.
by Jerome Peace 02 Sep '07

02 Sep '07

Getting double semi as sequencer harvested. Hi Jason, If chickens didnt lay eggs from time to time, how would there be any chickens? Please note that I wrote to Vassili and cced the list. The step I am taking is getting double semi ready for harvesting. *** >Jason Johnson jason.johnson.081 at gmail.com >Sun Sep 2 06:36:22 UTC 2007 > >On 9/2/07, Jerome Peace <peace_the_dreamer at yahoo.com> wrote: >> Hi Vassili >> >> It would be great if you looked in on the report and >> wonderful if you followed thru with your initial >> effort and helped get this ready for harvesting. > >Harvesting? To where? Into a release. This doesn't need to be in the main image imo. It probably does. This is a language change. The test (beyond does it work) is whether it gains general acceptance in use. I have personally decided it will probably improve code reading and clarity. The jawing about it on the list has gone as far as is good for jawing to go and the next step is to get something in shape to commit to the image. Code and tests. > It's still in experimental stage. Let's see some concrete proof that >it helps first. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Once it is distributed to everyone if it is deemed harmful it can be reverted. IMO good steps are 1) to prepare it to be commited to an alpha image. 2) to get it there and see general feedback in use. Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sick sense of humor? Visit Yahoo! TV's Comedy with an Edge to see what's on, when. http://tv.yahoo.com/collections/222

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[OT] looking for Beta Testers for a Second Life related tool written in Squeak
by Michael Rueger 02 Sep '07

02 Sep '07

Hi all, this is probably more than slightly off topic, but we (Impara) are looking for beta testers for a Plopp based sculpture modeling tool for SecondLife. Assuming that there are people actively using SecondLife :-) Can't really imagine ;-), but for those who don't know yet, Plopp is a 3D painting tool for kids, based on the Teddy algorithm and written in Squeak (http://planet-plopp.com). People interested in testing the tool and especially giving feedback on the exported results on Mac, Windows or Linux would need a SecondLife account and the ability to upload objects. Please reply to me off-list if you are interested. Thanks and apologies for this off-topic, shameless self promotion :-) Michael

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Some Delay tweaks
by Andreas Raab 02 Sep '07

02 Sep '07

Hi - Just FYI, I've updated http://bugs.squeak.org/view.php?id=6576 with another change set containing a few relevant tweaks to Delay. The most important one is probably the one which ensures that Delays get unscheduled if the process they wait for is terminated. The problem is that delays which are scheduled are kept in the SuspendedDelays even after "their" process terminates. So that, for example a "(Delay forSeconds: 9999999) wait" (with an Alt-Period following it) would leave that delay being scheduled for expiry 100 days from now although its process is long gone. The tweaks also ensure that delays which actually expire in Semaphore>>waitTimeoutMSecs: don't get unscheduled twice (since unscheduling is a linear search over all scheduled delays it should be avoided). Lastly, there is a bit of bullet-proofing to Delay>>handleTimerEvent since each poll of the msecs clock has the potential to overflow and needs to be guarded explicitly. The tweaks make sure there is only one such poll and consequently only one place to check. Except from another obscure situation which the change set addresses as well. In any case, it's a nice roundup for the Delay changes. If you're using the first one, you should probably use this one as well. Cheers, - Andreas

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Re: pipe
by Alan Kay 02 Sep '07

02 Sep '07

Just a kibitz from the peanut gallery.... It's not a question of functionality, but of simple readability and writeability. This idea has come up a number of times in the past, and it is a very reasonable one. In fact, there are a number of other perfectly reasonable additions that would be nice to have in Smalltalk. The basic idea of having a flat precedence for binary operators came from the same practice in APL -- if you have a zillion of them, then just using grouping instead of precedence can be a reasonable solution. But, for example, the "." could be considered to be a kind of operator (that is like a procedural "AND") that tests to see if the previous expression SUCCEEDed before moving to the next expression. We could think of it as being defined in Class Object. If we think of "precedence" then we want everything else in expressions to be more closely bound. This opens up the possibility of having something like "|" (apologies for using this for a different purpose) to deal with the "OR" case. So if an expression FAILs, then the OR path will be taken. It is easy to see why we should use precedence ideas here to avoid parentheses. Note that the overloading of these operators with a little more processing could lead both to a "Prolog" way of thinking about things on the one hand, and a way to think of parsing and searching, on the other. Both of these would be great additions to the basic semantics of Smalltalk. And so would pipes. They provide a syntactical way of writing very useful sequences of processing that is much nicer than functional application syntax (which gives a difficult to read "backwards view"), and Haskell did absolutely the right thing in making an operator for this. Since Squeak is a completely open Smalltalk, and intended to be extended in major as well as minor ways, there is no reason whatsoever to prevent these ideas and more to be added (and I wish that people would take it upon themselves to extend the language). Cheers, Alan At 11:40 AM 8/25/2007, Jason Johnson wrote: >On 8/25/07, Fabio Filasieno <fabio.filasieno(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > > check this out ... > > > > (((((((((((obj message1: param) message2:param) message1: param) > > message2:param) message1: param) message2:param) message1: param) > > message2:param) message1: param) message2:param) message1: param) > > message2:param > >This is a bit contrived. If you ever did find the need to do this it >should look like: > > >(((((((((((obj message1: param) > message2:param) > message1: param) > message2:param) > message1: param) > message2:param) > message1: param) > message2:param) > message1: param) > message2:param) > message1: param) > message2:param > >Code smell to be sure, but you pile what you don't like on one line >and say you can't read it while formatting what you do like and saying >"see!". > > > The pipe is needed to support a pipe&filter style of programming. That > > perfectly works with Smalltalk syntax, and truly > > opens up a better way of doing functional transformations. > >pipe&filter style of programming? Most people call this "functional >programming" and it doesn't require a pipe operator to work. Such an >operator can make certain code cleaner to be sure, but it doesn't >"open up a better way of doing functional transforms" by any means. >Just saves you one character per function call. > > > >>>>>>>>> cascade is useless <<<<<<<<<<<< > > > > because it's redundant : > > > > Example : > > > > point x:10; y:10; z:10. > > > > Your could write in fact. > > (((point x:10) y:10) z:10) > > since x:10 returns self anyway, y:10 returns self anyway and z:10 returns > > self anyway. > >In this case yes, one could use parenthesis, the cascade operator or a >new statement delimiter (which you call "pipe"). But sometimes you >wish to send a bunch of messages to an object that may not return >self. > > > With the pipe I removed parenthesis from much wider selection of cases, I > > enable a cleaner way of writing functional transformations, and therefore > > it's a better design. > >You don't have a conflict between cascade and your "pipe" unless you >want to use the ; symbol. Cascade is a special message that causes >the compiler to put in some op codes for duplicating the cascaded >object on the stack. What you want is just the current behavior >without needing the parenthesis to disambiguate. I don't think it >would be too hard to add a new symbol that has the compiler treat it's >left side the same as it would if the statement was in parenthesis.

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Using the .NET Bridge to access MS Office applications
by Fred (Frederik Vandendriessche) 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

Hi, Can anyone share a sample of how to use the .NET bridge to interact with MS Office applications? I've got the basics working as described on - http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3773 - http://www.saltypickle.com/squeakDotNet But as an inexperienced COM developer, I fail to advance much. Any and all suggestions much appreciated. -- Kind regards / Met vriendelijke groeten, Frederik Vandendriessche http://ooos.redirectme.net/FrederikAGVandendriessche

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Pipe syntax and the current methods
by merlyn＠stonehenge.com 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

Would any of the "pipe" advocates mind taking a stab at the *current* source methods, and rewrite the method showing how pipe syntax would have simplified or clarified the method? I ask this because I suspect that if you're following good practices (such as those adovocated in Beck's "Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns"), you won't actually *need* a pipe syntax, because your code would never have gotten that complicated. So, instead of writing Smalltalk with a bias for your previous programming language where pipe makes more sense, how about taking some *native* Smalltalk to show how pipe would have helped? -- Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095 <merlyn(a)stonehenge.com> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/> Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc. See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

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pipe
by Jerome Peace 01 Sep '07

01 Sep '07

Hi all, Well, now that the issue has gotten a well and noisy airing on the mailing list. Who wants to start the mantis issue so the good work here can get harvested? Yours in curiosity and service, --Jerome Peace P.S. I'm +1 on the ';;' syntax. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Choose the right car based on your needs. Check out Yahoo! Autos new Car Finder tool. http://autos.yahoo.com/carfinder/

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