[squeak-dev] smalltalk evolution

Juan Vuletich juan at jvuletich.org
Wed Jun 1 01:19:48 UTC 2011


info at tomsik.cz wrote:
> In short:
>
> 1.) binary messages make sense only for math. I've never implemented 
> even one binary message, have you? (for non-math things) 

That's not true (the first part. I don't know what you have ever 
implemented).
For instance look for implementors of  #=, #==, #>, #>>, #->, #+, #,, 
#&, #|.

This is a nice example of something I have implemented:
    Text
        buildWithStyles: ({
            #H3 -> (ParagraphStyle named: 'Heading 3').
            #b11 -> (CharacterStyle named: 'Blue 11').
            #r10b -> (CharacterStyle named: 'Red 10 bold').
            #g11i -> (CharacterStyle named: 'Green 11 Italic')
            } as: Dictionary)
        contents: [ :builder |
            builder , 'Starts with no character style. But later gets' < 
#b11 , ' small and blue' , ' and stays like that. Then' >< #r10b , ' 
emphasized and inside this,' < #g11i , ' green and italic' > ' for a 
while. Later' > ' back to Heading 3.' / #H3].

The objectives for this were:
- the styles can be crated dynamically, and there's no need to add new 
selectors for new styles
- it is very unobtrusive, the text is reasonably easy to read (much 
nicer than, for example, rtf or html), especially with Shout.

Anyway, even if it were true that binary messages "make sense only for 
math", that wouldn't be a reason to ban them! Math stuff is useful too!

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich



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