To:   squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
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From:



Hi Folks.

HOT NEWS!!!!

I have just released a new, native OS/2 port of Squeak. It can be found in
our pages at SUGAR Smalltalk Users Group ARgentina.

There was already a way to run Squeak in OS/2. For version 1.2 of Squeak,
Boris Shingarov had done a small modification to allow OS/2 run the UNIX
version, under XWindows emulation. But XWindows support isn't installed in
OS/2 by default, and I haven't tried it, but I think the screen redraw
speed shouldn't be good.

So I thought that something better was nedded. I first tried the IBM's
Open32 API, which is a Win32 API emulator. I could compile the Windows
version of Squeak, but again the screen redraw speed was too slow.

So I wrote an all new Squeak port, made especifically for OS/2. I used a
game oriented display API from IBM called DIVE, that uses hardware
acceleration to achieve fast display updates. (It somewhat similar to
DirectX in Windows.) The result is a perfectly usable Squeak on my 486
machine without the need for the 'Defer Display Update' trick.

I included a practical mapping of several keys. Delete behaves like
Shift-Backspace (forward delete), Ctrl-Break and Esc are the interrupt keys
and, Ctrl-Ins, Shft-Ins and Shft-Del manage the clipboard (emulating Alt-c,
Alt-v and Alt-x). Besides all Squeak color depth are supported from 1 to 32
bit. If you select a Squeak color mode with more colors that your OS/2
desktop, color dithering will occur.

This first version doesn't still have support for sound, MIDI, serial port,
networking or joystick. It just has the minimum functionality for running.
I will later add the rest.

System requeriments:
   + Long file name support (install Squeak on a HPFS drive)
   + DIVE video dlls (Installed by default by OS/2 4, but can be added to
any OS/2)
   + Video mode with at least 256 colors, and support for DIVE (most
drivers should work)

Read about it and download it from
http://www.sugarweb.com/squeak/ports/os2native/os2english.htm

Write me with bug reports, suggestions and comments.

Enjoy!

Juan Manuel Vuletich
jvuletic at dc.uba.ar