Beginners October 2006

beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org

67 participants
61 discussions

Underscore in 3.9
by Ramiro Diaz Trepat 24 Oct '06

24 Oct '06

Hello everyone, I started using the latest 3.9 image and there are no := there :) Only underscores. Even when I write := it turns into _ when I save. I am sure there is a very silly option out there to deactivate this behaviour. Anyone can tell me? Thanks r.

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problems with scoping
by Ch Lamprecht 24 Oct '06

24 Oct '06

Hi, I face a problem with variable scoping in block-closures: arr := Array withAll: #(1 2 3 4 5 ). blocks := arr collect: [ :i | [Transcript show: i] ]. blocks do:[:item | item value]. This prints 55555 because blocks contains [Transcript show: i] for all of its elements and accesses the current value of i. I would like to have blocks contain [Transcript show: 1] [Transcript show: 2] [Transcript show: 3] etc. so it would print 12345 TIA Christoph

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Hi I'm new
by Alexandre Jasmin 23 Oct '06

23 Oct '06

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?

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Etoy tutorials on Squeakland and documentation in general
by lanas 23 Oct '06

23 Oct '06

Folks, I'd like to go through the Etoy tutorials on Squeakland to familiarize myself about them but mostly also to be able to show them to our children as I find that Squeak is a very nice approach to programming concepts. Thing is, what do I do with a .pr file ? Such as NewPaint_05.014.pr. Do I simply file it in ? Do I view it in Firefox using a plugin ? This brings a related matter: documentation. Not tutorials, but complete documentation. I have the Guzdial book on Squeak (the white one) and it shows a lot of things, but is there an official documentation that is not made of snippets of info but is a reference to Smalltalk using Squeak ? Cheers, Al

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binary streams, how to
by Petr Fischer 23 Oct '06

23 Oct '06

Hi, which methods shall I use for binary (fast) reads/writes to file (stream)? I need to write Boolean (1byte), Integers (4 or 8 bytes), Floats (?) and Strings into big files, but standard way via storeOn: (text representation) is inefficient for me. Thanks, pf

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The Weekly Squeak Summary No. 3: Oct 15 - Oct 21, 2006
by Michael Haupt 23 Oct '06

23 Oct '06

Dear Squeakers, welcome to the The Weekly Squeak Summary, a weekly report on what's going on in the world of Squeak based on the Weekly Squeak blog. This issue is assembled by a not-yet jetlagged Michael who is looking forward to meeting some Smalltalkers at OOPSLA in Portland, Oregon. Highlights of the week: Ian Piumarta's Pepsi [1] is an exciting environment for implementing statically-compiled dynamic languages, possibly the foundation for a future implementation of Squeak...? The process for working on the planned release of the 3.10 image is being actively discussed [2]. The discussion started out with Göran Krampe's suggestion to make the development process more community-oriented. Entailing the discussion, the Squeak Foundation Board have decided to establish a release team [4], for which volunteers are sought [5]! Last week's news items: [1] Dynamic messages: a tour of Pepsi http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/16/dynamic-messages-a-tour-of-pep… [2] Process Woes http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/16/process-woes/ [3] Squeak: toy or instrument? http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/squeak-toy-or-instrument/ [4] Squeak Foundation Board meeting notes - October 18th, 2006 http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/19/squeak-foundation-board-meetin… [5] Call for release team volunteers http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/19/call-for-release-team-voluntee… [6] Recent package releases and announcements http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/19/recent-package-releases-and-an… [7] An optimization example http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/an-optimization-example/ [8] self vs. super http://weeklysqueak.wordpress.com/2006/10/20/self-vs-super/ You can find this and much more on The Weekly Squeak blog, the newsblog dedicated to the world of Squeak: http://news.squeak.org/ Subscribe to the Weekly Squeak RSS feed: http://news.squeak.org/feed/ Greetings from Portland, Michael

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please help
by Jerem' 20 Oct '06

20 Oct '06

Hi , we're french guys and , at school , we're just learning "Squeak" > > and searching some examples to help us. > > > > Our teachers doesn't know this language that's why we ask it to you !! > > > > Would you be so kind as to send us a little script of a squeak > > application!! > > > > Remenber we're novices ....Thankfully > >

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problem with big dictionary
by Petr Fischer 18 Oct '06

18 Oct '06

Hi, what is wrong with this code: ----- cnt := 5000000. s := ' jasdfh afhahkjasdf asdf sd'. d := Dictionary new: cnt. 1 to: cnt do: [ :i | d at: i put: (i asString, s). (i \\ 50000 = 0) ifTrue: [ Transcript show: i; cr. ]. ]. d size. ----- Squeak (latest 3.9) hangs randomly after 600 000 - 1 000 000 iterations (about 129MB of RAM [2GB] used before hang). hang = white squeak window, no interaction possible, 100% of cpu usage Thanks for suggestions, pf

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Some sample code to help understand Morphic applications
by Michael Davies 18 Oct '06

18 Oct '06

Hello all, I've been interested to read about some of the activities of the Documentation team, as I've recently been trying to work out how to build a GUI application in Squeak. To that end, I've built a sample image viewer application, heavily annotated, to keep a record of my understanding of the following areas: - Morphic layout - Use of Models and Pluggable Morphs - Interacting with the filesystem - Launching and managing background processes The code is attached, and can also be found at http://www.squeaksource.com/SampleImageViewer.html I'd appreciate it if anyone could spare some time to have a look at this sample and see if I'm making any obvious mistakes (especially my termination of processes, which I suspect isn't very robust), or if the 'squeakiness' of the code could be improved. If anyone from the Documentation team is building a repository of sample code for beginners, I'd be happy to incorporate this application into such a repository. Thanks in advance for any comments, Michael

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Some sample code to help understand Morphic applications
by Michael Davies 18 Oct '06

18 Oct '06

On 10/17/06, Matthew Fulmer <tapplek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > > Cool. That heavily commented SampleImageViewerMorph>>initialize is > especially useful Yes, that took a while to get working as I wanted! > The code is attached, and can also be found at > > http://www.squeaksource.com/SampleImageViewer.html > > > > I'd appreciate it if anyone could spare some time to have a look at > this > > sample and see if I'm making any obvious mistakes (especially my > > termination of processes, which I suspect isn't very robust), or if > the > > 'squeakiness' of the code could be improved. > > I am not sure, but every time I hit enter in the dir box, or > click the main panel, I get a debug window. What Squeak version > is this made for? I am using 3.8. A quick question: is the > correct way to run this program: > SampleImageViewerMorph new openInWorld Just "SampleImageViewerMorph new" is enough. I found that I was using a couple of newish features (String>>startsWith: and Collection>>select:thenDo:), so I've replaced them. I've tested Version 2 (attached) on a 3.7/3.8 image. > If anyone from the Documentation team is building a repository of > sample > > code for beginners, I'd be happy to incorporate this application into > such > > a repository. > > We have not considered a code repository, but this morph is > quite simple, and may be useful in a tutorial. I might > incorporate it into my beginner's tutorial: > http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5869 Please feel free to do so. I'd be happy to contribute some more commentary if it would help. Maybe I should have written a test-case to go with it as well! I think it would be a useful to have a set of such simple applications available to point new users at once they'd worked their way through tutorial materials and were wanting to get their teeth into something more meaty. For instance, I'm now working on a simple rss reader which might sit nicely alongside this (grabbing content from the BBC news rss, parsing xml, and displaying the articles on a map background). I'd be interested in seeing if other people have some simple applications that could demonstrate other aspects which I know can be difficult to 'get' eg, communicating with the OS, use of DBs, persistency solutions. If there was a reasonable cross-section of code, it would be striaghtforward to have a set of "SampleCode-..." packages on SqueakMap to provide easy access. Cheers, Michael

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Beginners October 2006