Beginners January 2007

beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org

71 participants
70 discussions

Is there a way to watch all the messages flowing in Squeak?
by andy.burnett＠knowinnovation.com 19 Jan '07

19 Jan '07

Although everything in Squeak is open, I find it quite hard sometimes to track down what is calling what. It would be great if I could open up a window to see which object is being called when I e.g. right click on the surface and bring up the World menu etc. Is there some way to turn on the debugger and just let it run, or something like that? thanks Andy B

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Help! Where's Wonderland in Squeak 3.9 ?
by Henry Lenzi 18 Jan '07

18 Jan '07

Dear All -- I need your help. I'm teaching my 10 year-old niece eToys. I'm running a Squeak version in FreeBSD that has Wonderland, but on our Macintosh, on version 3.9, we can't find Wonderland. We're using the computers sort of like in a class, side by side, so it would be nice to synchronize our actions. Now, where did they hide it? Where's Wonderland? Help! Please. TIA, Henry

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Bots Inc, Robocup or Maze Squad. --Collective problem solving
by Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas 17 Jan '07

17 Jan '07

Hi all again, (Sorry for the cross posting, but I would like to have feedback from an advice from a newbie to programming from the perspective of an expert and also feedback from the perspective of an educator). As I said in another mail, this semester is starting and I'm planning the activities for the courses. One of them is for people related with Informatics Technologies and Education (Virtual Learning) as I wrote previously* and the other one if for freshmen students in University (most of them). For the second one group I'm thinking in some kind of collaborative game development, following the ideas of the previous semester with the Pingus/Lemmings Clone [1]. This time I want to go quickly on Etoys and use the Bots Inc. environment to write more code overpassing the restrictions intended for Etoys and younger children. [1] http://pingus.seul.org/welcome.html At the same time, I'm interested in study the collaborative solving of problems from a theoretical, computational and educative perspective. The idea is to make some kind of Squeak simulation on how collective problem solving its carried and see, in the classroom, if the model, in some way, its related with reality. From the previous semester work I have some ideas and hypothesis (thanks to the community on these list for educational reflexion, multiagent hints and specially to Scott Wallace for his "coordination" code for messages to stars). I would like to hear what do you think of this ideas for student projects: - To make some kind of robocup: There will be two competing teams that are trying to make a point putting a "ball" in the goal of the opponents. I'm not so interested in thing like perception (where is the ball), but I'm on coordination between Robots and how they solve, in a collective fashion, a problem. In that sense I have thought this other project also, - To make some kind of Maze Squad: It's some kind of pingus clone, but using Bots instead of Etoys. The robots are lock in a maze and you can see the maze from upside (a la Pacman). They're relatively dumb (if they found a wall they just bounce and go back, if they found a hole they just fall into it), but there are some special bots which can be selected to accomplish special task and help the others to get out of the maze. I'm not a programmer and with Squeak I'm relearning the experience of programming with my students. But I have no problem learning and exploring with them. We don't even need to solve the problem (programming the all game). I just want to build with my students a nice place to learn and to probe ideas and see "emergent behavior". My bet is on the second project, but may be you have more hints to share with my and my students. Cheers, Offray Pdt: * I'm still waiting for ideas or pointer on collective hypermedia authoring... :-)

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Collaborative hypermedia authoring and Squeak
by Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas 17 Jan '07

17 Jan '07

Hi all, It's the beginning of this semester and we, at university are starting some courses using Squeak. The first one will start this Friday and will have a month of duration. I was talking today with the people who will take the course and they expressed their interest specially in the creation of collaborative hypermedia with Squeak. The people who going to start the course is working with new technologies and education. They have some experience with learning management systems, like Black Board and social software like mediawiki. They have different background from engineering, graphical design, education and literature, and they want seriously to integrate Squeak in the virtual learning experience in the University. They have proposed three narrative "excuses" for the authoring: city maps (stories of places), travels (stories of journeys) or moving from home to home (stories of the things that we have in home). I know that Squeak spirit is also "to provide computer support for the creative spirit in everyone" and educative correlate make a lot of sense for the scenario that we have here. We can create hypermedia stories with bookmorph and some other morphs... but I'm thinking in the collaborative part of the experience, because I have never made collaborative authoring (or even programming in Squeak). Monticello is more for programmers; I have heard of Nebraska but never use it. I have browsing quickly the SqSqueak site and I see a category on the Object Catalog called "Collaborate", with things like Nebraska Server, Fridge, Badge and so on... even there is a server with boards that can be shared, but seems to need some kind of plugin to be used (I think that is the Squeak plugin for the browser)... will be really nice to know more exactly where to find more documentation on this category and collaboration in general in Squeak. Any advice, intended activities, pointer to documentation or ideas about for this course will be greatly appreciated. I think that it's a good opportunity to spread the Squeak word. I'm all ear and eyes and will be waiting for your advices on how to proceed. Cheers, Offray

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How to access a Squeak class
by Warakorn Paphrawat 16 Jan '07

16 Jan '07

Hi ! Actually it is probably a very simple Squeak concept which I haven't understood, yet. Serving as an simple example, I would like to write a method, which accepts a Class as argument and which return the Superclass of that Class. The problem is that the argument must be an instance of String, that means the argument aClassName contains an actual class name (e.g. aClassName = 'Object'. or aClassName = 'ClassBuilder'), however, this is just a String object. returnSuperClass: aClassName |aSuperClass| aSuperClass := aClassName superclass. ^ aSuperClass. Obviously this method won't work, because aClassName is just an instance of ByteString. And instances of ByteString cannot understand the message superclass. So I need the actual class object which the content of the String aClassName represents. How can I achieve ? Or how can I make this method correct ? (it is imperative, that the argument aClassName is a String). Thanks for you help in advance. Best Regards Warakorn --------------------------------- Have a burning question? Go to Yahoo! Answers and get answers from real people who know.

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GUIs in Squeak, advice please
by Grant Rettke 16 Jan '07

16 Jan '07

Hi, May someone who is or has done GUI development in Squeak recently, may you please recommend the best way to go about implementing a GUI app? The swiki is information packed, but I would like to get the perspective of a human being on this one. Regards, Grant

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question on differences between images
by Jordi Delgado 15 Jan '07

15 Jan '07

Hi, My name is Jordi Delgado and this is my first message to this list. After reading the 'purple book', I've chosen Squeak to practice what I've learnt. Following Guzdial's book and trying to solve exercise 8 of chapter 2 (chapter 2!!; what kind of 'introductory' book is this?), and making a long story short, I got to this piece of code: | f | f := #('a' [Transcript show: 'An a was input']). f := (f copyFrom: 2 to: f size). (Compiler evaluate: f) class Selecting and printing gives the following result: Squeak Image 2.5 --> BlockContext Squeak Image 3.9 --> Array I've been playing with the method evaluate: (and variants) of the Compiler class in order to get some clue as to what is the reason of this behavior, but I guess I do not know enough Smalltalk to succeed. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Bests, Jordi

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Two questions: which UI toolkit to use, and how to force an application's objects to be destroyed when Squeak terminates?
by Jay Gould 14 Jan '07

14 Jan '07

I'm working an a small app that will support some text editing, searching, and cataloging. (I'm using 3.9 on Windows). My first question is about GUI toolkits. Should I use Morphic or Tweak? I know Morphic is (right now) the default Squeak GUI, and that it comes with the standard Squeak image while Tweak does not, but I've read (can't remember where) that Tweak is going to replace Morphic eventually as the standard UI. I don't really need anything fancy, just widgets to handle text input/display, images, tables, buttons, etc. Which toolkit would be most practical/appropriate for something like this? My second question is about application startup and shutdown. I'd like for this app to startup when the main class is sent a single message (e.g., #startup), and have it terminate when the user closes it, or alternately, when the user closes Squeak; that is, if they save & exit from Squeak without terminating the app first, I want the app to terminate anyway, for the objects to be destroyed (reclaimed, garbage collected, what have you) and not saved to the image file. How do I ensure its objects are released when Squeak is terminated, and not saved to disk? Thanks. -- Low Prices, Wide Selection of Gas Masks Everyday low price guarantee. We offer special police discounts and an extremely wide selection of gas masks, filters and huge selection of preparedness gear. http://a8-asy.a8ww.net/a8-ads/adftrclick?redirectid=24e08df2353d2e6cb9bae3a…

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Frequency of saving changes to Monticello?
by Grant Rettke 11 Jan '07

11 Jan '07

Hi, With Subversion the motto is "commit frequently". I commit after nearly every change, no matter how small. What is the motto/approach/style for committing to Monticello your changes to your classes? Regards, Grant

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New to Squeak
by McConnell, Brent 10 Jan '07

10 Jan '07

I am new to Squeak and am still trying to understand the UI. I am interested in experimenting with Seaside for web development. I was watching a screencast by Ramon Leon, "How to Build a Blog in 15 mintues", and noticed he was using a feature of Squeak that allowed him to get a dropdown box of methods for his parent classes while typing in the source window. I haven't been able to find this keyboard shortcut (or whatever it is). Alt-Q seems to give me the first thing it matches but not a dropdown list. Can anyone help? Brent

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Beginners January 2007