Squeak-dev digest, Vol 1 #251 - 29 msgs

Patrick Castle lemeia at bigpond.com
Sun Nov 4 02:55:11 UTC 2001


Hi Tansel,

I am very thankful for this thread as I have purchased the CDs and await
their arrival and it has helped inform me as to what I can expect.

I have absolutely no issue with the price of this content. It is a very
reasonable price - in fact a bargain.

As a rank newbie I'm expecting that only limited content of each CD will be
useful to me, but as I progress I'm expecting that I'll be able to go back
through earlier CDs and mine further value from them meaning that a years
worth of CDs may actually provide 3 years worth of value. :-)

Any subscription that promises to take me from a new starter to very
proficient in Squeak would have to be easily worth $100 a year.

Perhaps the justification for experienced users is a little more difficult
to come by - of that I'm not sure. However, for me it is a godsend.

PS - I'm happy with a CD and not too fussed about hours worth of
downloading.

Regards
Patrick

"Happiness is the hidden behind the obvious."


Message: 10
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 11:03:38 -0500
From: Editor - Squeak News <editor at squeaknews.com>
Organization: Squeak Online
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Downloading Squeak News (was:Re: A Review of SqueakNews)
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

Hello fellow Squeakers,

Please visit http://www.squeaknews.com/download/index.html for pointers to
and Squeak Foundation pages and Randal's mirror to download the first two
issues of Squeak News.

It seems that we will only be able to make first 2 issues available for free
download for a foreseeable future. We have some distribution problems with
one of the articles/demos included in the September issue. Since it is not
practical to redo the CDs for free unlimited distribution, and since it
would also make the issue lose some of its characteristics if we took that
article out it looks like the September issue will never be available for
unlimited  distribution as it stands Today.

For the other issues we have made a decision that they should be made
available at some stage if there are no impediments, but definitely not
before at least a year passes after their release.

Meanwhile we will continue to make selected articles available from within
each issue.

To be fair to the the pioneer subscribers who had to pay for the July and
August issues their subscriptions will be extended, and the purchasers of
these issues will be offered free issues or discounts for subscriptions.

I apologize for the confusion I may have created.

Best Regards
Tansel Ersavas
Squeak News
http://www.squeaknews.com



--__--__--

Message: 11
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 17:21:16 +0000
From: John Hinsley <jhinsley at telinco.co.uk>
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: etoy space invader tutorial (alpha)
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

Karl Ramberg wrote:
>
> I'v written up a tutorial with some of the knowledge I
> have accumulated about etoy scripting. It's not completed
> but it would be good to get some feedback at this stage...
> I'm not used to write tutorials and find it hard to get from
> the click-on-that-button-and-do-this stage to acutally teach.

A brave move, Karl (tutorials are so difficult and time consuming to
write)!

Just two initial thoughts: I've just taken a look and have yet to really
get down to it.

My first reaction was to put the GeeMail in a window (just to make it
easier to roll up -- I guess that most people will try to make the
project within the tutorial project).

My second was that some of the images are very unclear (I may be missing
something here, but making them bigger and smaller doesn't help with the
clarity.)

It's interesting that you used GeeMail as a way to present it where I'd
probably have used a book morph or maybe -- boring old traditionalist
that I am -- html within Scamper.

I'll go and have a nap and then see if I can follow the tutorial, but at
a glance, the instructions seem fine. I'm sure I'll learn something from
it!

Cheers

John



--
If you don't care about your data, like file systems which automagically
destroy themselves and have money to burn on 3rd party tools to keep
your
system staggering on, Microsoft (tm) have the Operating System for you.


--__--__--

Message: 12
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 18:40:35 +0100
Subject: Re: [OT] GEM, Blitter, and Atari ST (was: RE: Debian and SqueakL
	revisited again)
From: Henrik Gedenryd <Henrik.Gedenryd at lucs.lu.se>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

David A. Smith wrote:

> Can you give a pointer to the "principles"? Sounds like something I could
use.
>
> David
>

"Designing the Star User Interface", Byte April 1982, 242-282.

A true classic.

One gets an idea of how revolutionary it was by reading the ads on the same
pages.

Henrik




--__--__--

Message: 13
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 12:54:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu>
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [OT]Re: A Review of SqueakNews
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

On Fri, 2 Nov 2001, Editor - Squeak News wrote:

[snip]

> I am grateful for these comments! If you look at my message I
> suggested the first 3 issues should be placed only, and in fact the
> third issue may prove to be problematical since its size is about
> 118MBs and I may have problem with free redistribution of one of the
> items in the contents on the web.

This is, in general, perhaps only in theory, a problem with widely
available free distribution of the articles...some folks (none who've as
yet contributed, I'll bet, but future authors) might want to have more
control over their articles. I've been writing my articles mostly in
Squeak Friendly HTML (validator coming to a page near you) so that
separating out the articles and putting them on a "regular" website won't
be *too too* difficult, but as yet I've not had the time or energy to do
actually do so. Lot's of things to deal with.

That all being said, Yay to Randell and Tansel!

> Obviously We can't really offer all
> past issues for free and these will be the only ones that will be
> freely downloadable on the web for a foreseeable future, but I have no
> objections for the first issues to be given out for free because
> people will not appreciate them unless they see them.

FWIW, I like the idea of quarterly or yearly "cumulative" CDs, though,
they way things are going, the images might have to be compressed :)

More work, but perhaps better advertizing, is a "Best of" issue for
download (and maybe as a subscription bonus or available for a
"news-stand" price).

Note that, unfortunately, most of these sorts of suggestion end up being
suggestions that Tansel do a bunch of work.=20

[snip]

> Think about the process: Articles (many of them active) have to
> be collected, formatted and edited, and integrated under one image
> (which if you think about the variety of the images they are coming
> out of it by itself may be a hair raising experience).

Not to mention that generating such articles is nontrivial. I've stayed
away from active content just to keep myself sane. That is, I don't think
I could have written as many articles if I'd have to debug them while I
was debugging my code :) Sometimes it's a relief to be able to pop the
article up in Amaya or Dreamweaver! Especially for thinkz loik spelliny
cheecking!

Also, I'm still grappling with what I'd like an "active essay" about
Squeak to be like. One thing you want to be able to do, if you're trying
to teach someone how to "tweak" their system, is roll back changes so they
can try them out. To set that up automatically is non-trivial at the
moment. At least for me :) I've also been inspired by ILEX to want
configuable *content*. I.e., to have my articles be pitched at several
different levels of expertise, depending on a preference check. That would
be *extrememly* cool, but is *very very* hard (at least, right now). I
long for the day when the whole of SqueakNews is set up that way, so you
can log on as a newbie and not just get the newbie articles, but have
*all* the articles be newbie ones!

[snip]
> There is actually a serious discussion of coming up with a Kung
> Fu/Self defence/healing e-zine based on the technology of Squeak News
> (look for the article "Capturing the knowledge of a Kung-Fu
> Grandmaster" coming up in February of March 2002). Another one about a
> cook book that uses a central server to share recipes is also on the
> table (look for the "souffl=E9" article that will come out in December).

That's *sooooo* cool!

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.



--__--__--

Message: 14
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 13:00:41 -0500 (EST)
From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu>
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Cc: Helge Horch <Helge.Horch at munich.netsurf.de>
Subject: Re: [GOODIE] StarSqueak Game of Life
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

On Fri, 2 Nov 2001, Scott Wallace wrote:

> Helge,
>
> I was able to load and run this from Bob's SuperSwiki without
> incident or difficulty, on a 3.2a/4467 image.

Me too, only on a plugin, Squeakland 3.1.4253, update #69. Havne't beat on
it too hard, but it loaded *very* quickly and is running fine!

I love the Squeak plugin.

>  So your publishing
> foray was clearly successful.

Yes.

> This is very beautifully done, and fun, and I love the support
> materials you prepared!

These may be Scott's words, but they flow from my lips as well.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.



--__--__--

Message: 15
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 13:13:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu>
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [celeste] moving from Communicator to Celeste....
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

On Sat, 3 Nov 2001, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

[snip]
> Back on topic: I think I won't switch to Celeste before the file format is
> not compatible with the standard unix stuff. Maybe there should be various
> backends? One for the monolithic message file, one for your "each message
> a separate file", one for "each message folder a file, nested folders are
> directories (my pref)" - and then, IMAP support would be cool, too :)

One for Minnstore, one for Pointrel, one for MySQL, one for Gemstone,
etc. etc...

...and be able to mix and match all o' these...

I really like this (oh, and I'd love to have MailDB refactored a bit, it's
actually a pretty damn useful persistency mechanism, if a bit hard to
handle at the moment). The question, of course, is how much of the
capabilities of the backend do you want to shine through. Using these
various stores merely as a replacement for the .messages file should be
reasonably straightforward...you just have to alias (or make
pluggable) the current msgID assignment & lookup functions. The table of
contents list is cached in image (i.e., the indexfile) and the categories
are just named lists of msgIDs (one day to be hierarchical...I
hope) (although, I think lex may be doing something with categories as
named lists of dynamically generated msgIDs, i.e., the results of
filtering a la Evolutions virtual folders).

That's one pretty cool thing about Celeste, it's fairly easy to bend to
your will, within certain limits.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.



--__--__--

Message: 16
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 20:35:55 +0100
From: Karl Ramberg <karl.ramberg at chello.se>
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: etoy space invader tutorial (alpha)
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

John Hinsley wrote:
>
> Karl Ramberg wrote:
> >
> > I'v written up a tutorial with some of the knowledge I
> > have accumulated about etoy scripting. It's not completed
> > but it would be good to get some feedback at this stage...
> > I'm not used to write tutorials and find it hard to get from
> > the click-on-that-button-and-do-this stage to acutally teach.
>
> A brave move, Karl (tutorials are so difficult and time consuming to
> write)!
>
> Just two initial thoughts: I've just taken a look and have yet to really
> get down to it.
>
> My first reaction was to put the GeeMail in a window (just to make it
> easier to roll up -- I guess that most people will try to make the
> project within the tutorial project).
That's a good idea, I'll put it in a window
>
> My second was that some of the images are very unclear (I may be missing
> something here, but making them bigger and smaller doesn't help with the
> clarity.)
I'm not quite sure what you mean here... All the images are just screen
shots
dragged and dropped on the geemail, no scaling but some red marker circles

> It's interesting that you used GeeMail as a way to present it where I'd
> probably have used a book morph or maybe -- boring old traditionalist
> that I am -- html within Scamper.
I have used the geemail before on occasions and liked it.
There is hardly any formatting issues, just type, a new line
where images should be, press return till the cursor appears again
and type on. Just one long scrolling page.
A bookmorph is probably better for a prewritten text as you
know where to put page breaks etc.
I'm no fan of html, too much trouble with external images. I like
the speed of just dropping the screen shoot where I want it, cmd-click
to bring up the halo, paint with a red marker, keep the changes and
just continue typing. It's really good for fast speed and workflow
when dealing with multiple screen shots to work this way so
one does not loose the impetus during not so much fun
explaining :-)


> I'll go and have a nap and then see if I can follow the tutorial, but at
> a glance, the instructions seem fine. I'm sure I'll learn something from
> it!

Hope you have a good time.

Note to my self:
A little better explanation of the project at the start would
probably be a good thing to add, so the reader know which
issues will come up and see where it's going. Maybe even a
index:-)

Thanks for your comments
Karl


--__--__--

Message: 17
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 22:08:47 +0200
From: danielv at netvision.net.il
Subject: Vote for inclusion - [FIX] BrowseCodeFix; [ENH] FileInChangeSet;
[ENH]
 Celeste-FetchLimit
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org,
	Mike Rutenberg <mdr at akasta.com>
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

I've tested these changes by Leandro, and I vote for them to be added to
the updates stream.

Celeste-FetchLimit has a method that's redundant and uncalled -
MailDB>>fetchMessagesFrom:to:fromPOPConnection:doFormatting:

Hope this helps.

Daniel Vainsencher

Leandro Caniglia <caniglia at dm.uba.ar> wrote:
>
> --==CelesteAttachment83740==
>
> from preamble:
>
> "Change Set:		BrowseCodeFix
> Date:			8 October 2001
> Author:			Leandro Caniglia
>
> Replaces all size=0 tests found in TextLink|analyze:with: with ifNotNil:
> tests.
> This prevents some errors when browsing code."!


--__--__--

Message: 18
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 21:33:42 +0200
From: danielv at netvision.net.il
Subject: Re: [celeste] moving from Communicator to Celeste....
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

My advice would be not to wait for anything, just to wade in carefully.
The LargeList is a better solution (lazy lists) for a problem (slow
lists) that has a reasonable workaround (lists limited to show latest N
messages) as it is. And LL might still take a while to be integrated.

If you decide to try it out, you might want to "leave mail on server",
and then fetch your mail to both Celeste and your usual client. This
might get you duplicate messages on Celeste (if your other client didn't
remove the messages you've already downloaded), but these can be readily
handled using the "find duplicates" function.

In short - this path has been worn pretty smooth.

Daniel

Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin at texoma.net> wrote:
> Has MinneStore been explored for applicability?
>
> There are pros and cons to each of the schemes.
> As long as it performs reasonably well.
> Is robust, stable and scalable.
> Works on most all of the platforms Squeak does.
> Then I am open to it.
>
> Hopefully within the next week or two (who knows) I'll be able to set up
> Celeste and get working with it on my current mail volume. It may not be
> ready for me to import my existing mail but possibly to use with my
> current mail. Or would you suggest waiting until the LargeList issue is
> resolved?
>
> Thanks for your input.
>
> Jimmie Houchin
>
> Lex Spoon wrote:
> >
> > It would be neat to have each message in its own file, but as Tim
> > suggests this will really stress certain file systems.  I guess you can
> > make multiple subdirectories, but IMHO this is pretty ugly!
> >
> > The biggest problem we have with the disk format is that loading and
> > saving the index file is kinda slow.  This is a separate issue.
> >
> > > What are thoughts about an indexing search engine?
> > > That way we wouldn't have to scan each file on a search.
> > > Or does Celeste already have such.
> >
> > Celeste actually has an in-memory index that makes most queries
> > extremely fast.  One big thing it *doesn't* have, is an index that's
> > useful for doing full-text searches.  That would indeed be nice....
> >
> > -Lex


--__--__--

Message: 19
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 21:33:45 +0200
From: danielv at netvision.net.il
Subject: Re: [celeste] moving from Communicator to Celeste....
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

Hi Guys!

It's cool to see more people interested in Celeste - I use it, I like
the power of being able to shape a tool I use a lot. Would be cool to
have more fellow users. I'm glad to help anyone try to figure out or do
this or that.

Anyway, I repeat Lex's request of a few weeks back - if you're
discussing Celeste, it helps if you do it in reference to how it
actually works.

For example, there may be a mapping between Celeste's flat categories,
and nested folders (like the IMAP model assumes, also like "each message
a file, folders are nested directories") - but it's not trivial.

It would be more useful to say "I think the mapping could be like this"
or "I would like Celeste refactored so I can plug in my nested folders
model instead of flat categories and reuse most of the code", or better
yet, to just code it. Saying "let the Square be Round" is just not
likely to work.

[About different backends]
Actually, the latest SqueakNews mentioned GemSqueak (The Sugar guys
really do amazing Squeak work), which got me thinking about doing a
Gemstone link. Gemstone is available NC for Linux, and having a real DB
backend would free Celeste of many worries...

Daniel

Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu> wrote:
> On Sat, 3 Nov 2001, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > Back on topic: I think I won't switch to Celeste before the file format
is
> > not compatible with the standard unix stuff. Maybe there should be
various
> > backends? One for the monolithic message file, one for your "each
message
> > a separate file", one for "each message folder a file, nested folders
are
> > directories (my pref)" - and then, IMAP support would be cool, too :)
>
> One for Minnstore, one for Pointrel, one for MySQL, one for Gemstone,
> etc. etc...
>
> ...and be able to mix and match all o' these...
>
> I really like this (oh, and I'd love to have MailDB refactored a bit, it's
> actually a pretty damn useful persistency mechanism, if a bit hard to
> handle at the moment). The question, of course, is how much of the
> capabilities of the backend do you want to shine through. Using these
> various stores merely as a replacement for the .messages file should be
> reasonably straightforward...you just have to alias (or make
> pluggable) the current msgID assignment & lookup functions. The table of
> contents list is cached in image (i.e., the indexfile) and the categories
> are just named lists of msgIDs (one day to be hierarchical...I
> hope) (although, I think lex may be doing something with categories as
> named lists of dynamically generated msgIDs, i.e., the results of
> filtering a la Evolutions virtual folders).
>
> That's one pretty cool thing about Celeste, it's fairly easy to bend to
> your will, within certain limits.
>
> Cheers,
> Bijan Parsia.


--__--__--

Message: 20
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 15:16:32 -0500
Subject: posted Celeste to swiki
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
From: "Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu>
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

Okay, Celeste development is happening kinda quickly at the moment.
I've posted changesets for LargeLists and FilterCeleste to the Swiki
which contain all the patches I've sent around in the past.  If people
would like me to add specific patches to this, then I'd be willing to do
that as well.

I haven't tested them thoroughly, except that I'm using them to post
this message in a fresh Squeak image.  :)

If someone has a better suggestion on how to manage this code, I'm up
for it.  It sounds like some of the modules systems will work nicely
once they are in a status to be used heavily.



-Lex Spoon


--__--__--

Message: 21
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 14:02:50 -0500
Subject: Re: [celeste] moving from Communicator to Celeste....
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
From: "Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu>
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org




> Back on topic: I think I won't switch to Celeste before the file format is
> not compatible with the standard unix stuff. Maybe there should be various
> backends? One for the monolithic message file, one for your "each message
> a separate file", one for "each message folder a file, nested folders are
> directories (my pref)" - and then, IMAP support would be cool, too :)
>

Directly accessing files that are in foreign formats is pretty awkward.
It's a big design constraint, and it would put pressure on things like
having a full index available for searching.

Directly accessing Unix mail files in particular is hard, because Squeak
can't do Unix locking.  This is a specific reason that POP is the main
way Celeste gets email: POP works to and  from any platform.  Could you
instead set up your Unix files to be accessible via POP (or later, IMAP)?

Anyway, I like the idea of having multiple *sources*.  And IMAP should
be one of them.  Doing IMAP right would require an improved index file
format, to avoid downloading the same message multiple times.


-Lex


--__--__--

Message: 22
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 22:16:03 +0100
Subject: [ALL] Test for supporting changes
From: ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch>
To: "squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

Hi

I would like to know your point of view on that:
    I think that it is really important for multiple reasons (ease of
integration, documentation, refactorings....) that we try to joined testCase
with the enhancements or bug fixes.

I know that this can be painful but if we could succeed to slowly but
steadily build a database of tests for squeak this would be great for the
future. Because this is like putting money into a bank account slowly you
get money that you would not ;).

I will to apply that to myself. I'm trying to extract the fileList with
registry from SWT to port it into Squeak3.2a and add some tests.

Stef



--__--__--

Message: 23
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 16:00:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu>
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [celeste] moving from Communicator to Celeste....
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

On Sat, 3 Nov 2001 danielv at netvision.net.il wrote:

> Hi Guys!
>
> It's cool to see more people interested in Celeste

Hmm. I don't think I add to the *more* total :)

[snip]
> Anyway, I repeat Lex's request of a few weeks back - if you're
> discussing Celeste, it helps if you do it in reference to how it
> actually works.
>
> For example, there may be a mapping between Celeste's flat categories,
> and nested folders (like the IMAP model assumes, also like "each message
> a file, folders are nested directories") - but it's not trivial.

Well there are many possible mappings, I'd wager, but I'm not sure it
matters in at least the following sense: I'm pretty content to have
categories *along side* any other mechanism. Now, whether in such a
scenario categories would still be global to a message set (i.e.,
mailbox) or local to a message set/file (like the #openOn: strategy would
suggest) are things which should be decided, or, at least, allowed for.


> It would be more useful to say "I think the mapping could be like this"
> or "I would like Celeste refactored so I can plug in my nested folders
> model instead of flat categories and reuse most of the code",

I think I did say some stuff like that :) A lot depends on what level you
want the capabilities of your backend to show through.

Putting the "celeste model" on top of *any* backend is just a matter of
mapping msgIDs + access methods into that backend. The organization of the
backend matters *only* in how it complicates the access method.

The key method being IndexFileEntry>>rawText which uses
MessageFile>>getMessage:at:textLength.

Assuming the right adjustments, a MySqlIndexFileEntry's #raw text might
have something like:

	^database getMessage: msgID

Which translated into a sql query in MySqlMessages, instead of a file
read.

IOW, you *can* use the current Celsete model ontop of the storage backend
of choice, with the added benefit of automatic caching of the index and
category files.

(Here, I think some refactoring could help, at least an abstract
IndexFileEntry class.)

On the flip side, any enhancments to Celeste categorization can be layered
ontop of just about any organization, including the current flat
files. Hierarchical categories are just a matter letting the category
dictionary entries hold other categories (probably worth having a specific
Category object at that point). Oh, and some ui stuff :)

> or better
> yet, to just code it.

Well, faster said than done :)

> Saying "let the Square be Round" is just not
> likely to work.

I hope I've made it clear that I, at least, wasn't saying anything of the
sort :)

> [About different backends]
> Actually, the latest SqueakNews mentioned GemSqueak (The Sugar guys
> really do amazing Squeak work), which got me thinking about doing a
> Gemstone link. Gemstone is available NC for Linux, and having a real DB
> backend would free Celeste of many worries...

Well, some.

If we're satisfied in the split as I pictured it above (i.e., Celeste
still doing its own thing inside the image) then things are simple. A
harder task is to try to let some of the advantages of a backend filter up
to the Celeste user in a coherent way. One (nasty) option is emulating the
features of a backend in the Celeste model, for each new type of
backend. *Some* degree of this might be worth while (e.g., getting some
sort of hierarchical view in there).

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.



--__--__--

Message: 24
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 15:41:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia at email.unc.edu>
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [celeste] moving from Communicator to Celeste....
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

On Sat, 3 Nov 2001 danielv at netvision.net.il wrote:

[snip]
> If you decide to try it out, you might want to "leave mail on server",
> and then fetch your mail to both Celeste and your usual client. This
> might get you duplicate messages on Celeste (if your other client didn't
> remove the messages you've already downloaded), but these can be readily
> handled using the "find duplicates" function.
[snip]

The last time I tried this I found it pretty durn painful. Now this was
back in 3.0alpha days, but still!

It would be nice if Celeste didn't just download everything. I *believe*
there's some way to only fetch unfetched messages (I seem to recall Eudora
being able to do that).

Hmm. My Quick Scan of RFC1460 suggests that there's no formal way to do
that *but* that it shouldn't be *too too* hard to work up something. If
you're only working with one mailclient leaving stuff on the server, then
the server may keep track of the last item RETRed. My usage scenario is
something like: want to do most mail handling in Celeste *but* would like
to leave mail on server for IMAP access when I'm away plus I might want to
download the mail to a different machine for archiving. For me, then, it
probably will work (if this RETR thing is correct). Leaving mail on the
server for redownloading just seems broken to me.

Anyhoo.

Cheers,
Bijan Parsia.



--__--__--

Message: 25
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 13:22:54 -0800
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
From: Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
Subject: Re: etoy space invader tutorial (alpha)
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

John and Karl --

The blurry images are ones that have not yet been downloaded
automatically from the server. I am currently using a phone line and
they seem to take a very long time -- I'm not sure why.

What is the advantage of putting a Geemail in a window? -- it already
has scrollbars. (You may not think so because they are very much
delayed in appearing because of the slow picture download, but a
mouseover the Geemail will eventually make them appear.)

Cheers,

Alan

=======

At 8:35 PM +0100 11/3/01, Karl Ramberg wrote:
>John Hinsley wrote:
>>
>>  Karl Ramberg wrote:
>>  >
>>  > I'v written up a tutorial with some of the knowledge I
>>  > have accumulated about etoy scripting. It's not completed
>>  > but it would be good to get some feedback at this stage...
>>  > I'm not used to write tutorials and find it hard to get from
>>  > the click-on-that-button-and-do-this stage to acutally teach.
>>
>>  A brave move, Karl (tutorials are so difficult and time consuming to
>>  write)!
>>
>>  Just two initial thoughts: I've just taken a look and have yet to really
>>  get down to it.
>>
>>  My first reaction was to put the GeeMail in a window (just to make it
>>  easier to roll up -- I guess that most people will try to make the
>>  project within the tutorial project).
>That's a good idea, I'll put it in a window
>>
>>  My second was that some of the images are very unclear (I may be missing
>>  something here, but making them bigger and smaller doesn't help with the
>>  clarity.)
>I'm not quite sure what you mean here... All the images are just screen
shots
>dragged and dropped on the geemail, no scaling but some red marker circles
>
>>  It's interesting that you used GeeMail as a way to present it where I'd
>>  probably have used a book morph or maybe -- boring old traditionalist
>>  that I am -- html within Scamper.
>I have used the geemail before on occasions and liked it.
>There is hardly any formatting issues, just type, a new line
>where images should be, press return till the cursor appears again
>and type on. Just one long scrolling page.
>A bookmorph is probably better for a prewritten text as you
>know where to put page breaks etc.
>I'm no fan of html, too much trouble with external images. I like
>the speed of just dropping the screen shoot where I want it, cmd-click
>to bring up the halo, paint with a red marker, keep the changes and
>just continue typing. It's really good for fast speed and workflow
>when dealing with multiple screen shots to work this way so
>one does not loose the impetus during not so much fun
>explaining :-)
>
>
>>  I'll go and have a nap and then see if I can follow the tutorial, but at
>>  a glance, the instructions seem fine. I'm sure I'll learn something from
>>  it!
>
>Hope you have a good time.
>
>Note to my self:
>A little better explanation of the project at the start would
>probably be a good thing to add, so the reader know which
>issues will come up and see where it's going. Maybe even a
>index:-)
>
>Thanks for your comments
>Karl


--


--__--__--

Message: 26
Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2001 13:50:39 -0800
To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
From: John M McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com>
Subject: Re: [ALL] Test for supporting changes
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

>Hi
>
>I would like to know your point of view on that:
>     I think that it is really important for multiple reasons (ease of
>integration, documentation, refactorings....) that we try to joined
testCase
>with the enhancements or bug fixes.
>
>I know that this can be painful but if we could succeed to slowly but
>steadily build a database of tests for squeak this would be great for the
>future. Because this is like putting money into a bank account slowly you
>get money that you would not ;).
>
>I will to apply that to myself. I'm trying to extract the fileList with
>registry from SWT to port it into Squeak3.2a and add some tests.
>
>Stef

Yes, this would be good. For example I'm going to write some test
cases for the platform specific primitives. Why? Well to compile a VM
under OS-X using Apple's Project Builder you need to convert HFS path
names to Unix path names where you do unix file IO, this is done by
some OS calls.

So for example Lamie:Squeak:Squeak.Image becomes
/Volumes/Lamie/Squeak/Squeak.Image

As you see the name aren't a straight forward conversion.

However, golly to ensure that it all works means I need to have those
test cases.

Also at OOPSLA Tim had reported a problem to me with how directory
contents were reported, which had different behavior on unix versus
the mac. Hopefully this will flesh out differences between VM and
unify the vision.

Besides there must be some XP folks out there chanting, where are the
test cases?

--
--
===========================================================================
John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
===========================================================================


--__--__--

Message: 27
Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2001 22:06:29 +0100
Subject: Looking for help to participate at Squeak News
From: ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch>
To: "squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org"
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Cc: <scg-all at iam.unibe.ch>
Reply-To: squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org

Hi

I'm looking for somebody that would help me to translate the columns in
french that I have in english. Currently I cannot write them in french
(which takes me too much time) and translate them in english (which should
be much faster because the structure and code are there). We could then
submit them to squeak-news.

Stef




--__--__--

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