[Newbies] Hi I'm new

[Alexandre Jasmin]

After a few months of intensive Squeak usage I guess it's time I
introduce myself to the list and talk a bit about what I've been doing.

Person newPersonNamed: 'Alexandre Jasmin'
  location: 'montreal area' "Canada";
  occupation: 'College student';
  introduceTo: theList.


One of the few projects I have been working on is a VM port for the
Nintendo DS. (A small [PDA like] video game console)
You need some special hardware to run homebrew software on that Nintendo
console and it only has 4MiB of RAM.

Actually I only spent a weekend on that one. It's hardly complete as I
only implementd ioShowDisplay, ioGetButtonState and ioMousePoint and a
few other "empty" functions.

I could stat that old "mini squeak" image and move a few windows around
with the stylus. 

I haven't touched that VM project a while but If there's enough interest
I might be able to spend another weekend on it and hopefully release
something usable ;-)

I'm surprised to see how portable the VM is. All you have to do is
change a few line of C code. Though I guess it'd be even better if you
could achieve the same feat with a few line of Smalltalk



Something else I've been working on is a BitTorrent implementation in
Squeak. I'm still learning and some of my classes will need a big
overhaul before they gets useable. Working with Squeak is really fun
tough. 

The BitTorrent implementation consists both of a client program and a
tracker (comanche module).

I appreciate the development tools such as SmallLint, sUnit and
Monticello and I'm really learning a lot about the image by reading its
code. Notably from that wonderful set of collection classes.

I also had a look at Magritte yesterday. I think it's a great framework.
Probably more flexible than the other data validation schemes I have
used (such as MFC DDX). It also saves you from writing a lot of stupid
View related code. Adding some wxSqueak support could be fun.



Unfortunatly I'm still having a few issues with Squeak. For instance, I
always suffer from a lack of screen space. My squeak world is just
overpopulated by Browsers and Workspaces.

Window management is something I'm having a hard time to figure out. I
had a quick look at the Whisker Browser but I'm not sure it's the right
solution. It's more like I'm just doing somethig wrong.

Btw NexT style UIs are causing me headaches because when I pin down some
of these floating menus they are soon obscured by other windows so I
never get to use them.

I guess I'm more familiar with theses MS Windows or console based
programs that take the up the whole screen and sometimes split it in two
to show a second document.

It'd be fun to meet other Squeakers in person and hopefully share a few
tricks with them. There was an email on squeak-dev about a Smalltalk
meeting in Toronto but it's a bit difficult for me to get there
especially during the week. Are there any Smalltalkers in Montreal?