[Wxsqueak] An offer to help out!

[Rob Rothwell]

Rob,

Anyone reading this list will think you have started talking to
yourself...if it becomes an issue, I'll change my name!

At your suggestion I am moving the conversation to the mailing list (maybe
some more interest will be drummed up when people are Googling).

At any rate, thank you for the invitation!  I am looking forward to it, and
I figure my biggest contribution over your next round will probably be
testing things you are working on, and in so doing I will naturally get up
to speed on your work as I gain some natural entry points into your code
during curious debugging...

(Undoubtedly, philosophical conversation will ensue!)

Thanks again; I'm looking forward to providing any help I can,

Rob



On 11/30/06, Rob Gayvert <rtg at rochester.rr.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Rob,
>
> My wxSqueak work has been dormant the past few months, as I have been
> waiting for the lastest versions of Squeak (3.9) and wxWidgets (2.8) to
> go final. Now that they're almost there, I plan to ramp up again shortly.
>
> I'd be delighted to get some help, or even just some usage reports.
> After an initial flurry of discussion last year, I haven't heard from
> many people, so I don't know if anyone else is still interested.
>
> As for the printing bug, I've seen it crash at times, so I know there
> are some issues there, but I haven't looked into it much further. In 0.5
> I'll try to get this straightened out.
>
> Having a mingw build setup would be great, so that's a perfect place for
> you to start. This is important for performance, because the best I can
> do with a VM built with MSVC6 is about half the speed of the stock
> Windows VM, which is compiled with the gnuify options using mingw.
>
> Let's move our discussions over to the mailing list at
> wxsqueak at lists.squeakfoundation.org.
>
> Thanks again!
>
> .. Rob
>
>
> Rob Rothwell wrote:
> > Rob,
> >
> > It seems I could not contain my usual long-winded nature, so in summary,
> > 1)  I have a wxSqeak "bug" report I could not find a reference to on the
> > squeak lists, and 2)  I would also like to offer to help out with this
> > project in any way that I could, making the big assumption that you
> > would want any help.  Verbose details follow:
> >
> > First, as a sort of "hmm...interesting" "bug" report, I haven't been
> > able to get any of the "print demos" in the WxDemoFrame class (such as
> > WxPrintDialogDemo or WxPrintFrameworkDemo) to work on Windows XP in
> > either the 0.4 or 0.4.1 demos downloaded from wxsqueak.org
> > <http://wxsqueak.org>.  I also successfully built my own 3.8 wxSqueak
> > image "by hand" with the same result, but the interesting thing is that
> > these demos both work on my machine from a 0.04alpha wxMorphic demo
> > project.  Things that make you go "hmmm..."
> >
> > Next, I am rather decent intuitive debugger with 20+ years of [self
> > taught] programming experience and a knack for finding bugs in languages
> > I barely understand.  I am just learning Sqeak/Smalltalk, but have a lot
> > of low level Windows programming experience from a past life, albeit
> > using home-grown virtual "jump-tables" with Eric Issacson's A386 and a
> > Borland linker instead of a "modern" C/C++ compilers (which I can use
> > but have just never...enjoyed as much as Assembly).  For high level
> > work, I have always been a fan of the simplicity of BASIC, but have
> > longed for a way to combine that simplicity with a low-level ability to
> > do whatever you want in an "elegent" manner (unlike the hacks required
> > in ANY VB project!).  Enter Smalltalk.  I should have studied Computer
> > Science instead of Physics and I could have saved myself the trouble of
> > trying to create such a system that already existed without my knowledge
> > (but that's another story)!
> >
> > At any rate...I don't know how to make the offer because I have never
> > worked with someone at a distance, but would you like some help with
> > wxSqueak?  You are essentially laying the foundation to use Squeak as a
> > cross-platform VM in a way that could make it, well, useful!  Nothing
> > against the integrated Squeak World, but they have a long way to go to
> > take that vision to fruition in terms of competing with the various
> > operating systems for the way users want to "run" their programs.
> >
> > Anyway, I guess I am offering to help because what I want to "do" with
> > wxSqueak is create a more robust, but "realistic" way of programming in
> > Squeak for the masses--I think you could go far beyond "GUI builder" to
> > a true "object" experience beyond what .NET and the like have to offer
> > (again, another story), and it seems like that is at least similar to
> > the direction you are headed in as well.  I'm not sure why this is
> > coming out of MY mouth, but why reinvent something if someone is already
> > working on it?  Why not try to help instead?  I would need to get the
> > right tools loaded for compiling, etc, and get up to speed on your work,
> > but I would be happy to assist in the effort.  However, maybe you enjoy
> > doing it all yourself--I sure know how that goes!
> >
> > Let me know if you are interested, and we could talk about how I could
> > be useful to you.  In the meantime I'll try to get the Ming compiler up
> > and running and have a shot at understanding your code and how these
> > "primitives" work in Sqeak.  Either way, I have already got more out of
> > your work than almost two years of poking around in Squeak simply
> > because I could relate to the problem.
> >
> > Thanks for your time,
> >
> > Rob Rothwell
> >
> > --
> > The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject
> > what they think, not what they see.  -- Huang Po
>
>


-- 
The foolish reject what they see, not what they think; the wise reject what
they think, not what they see.  -- Huang Po
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