On 4/26/07, email@noblebell.com email@noblebell.com wrote:
My question, can I develop shareware applications in Squeak that are standalone and also crossplatform?
Yes, you can. Squeak applications are automatically crossplatform. You can keep an application from being crossplatform by doing silly things with file names, but it is very easy to ensure it is crossplatform. On the other hand, it is a fair bit of work to make it standalone. Squeak applications are normally bundled with the programming environment. You can get rid of the programming environment and make the application standalone, but it takes work and the details are too complicated to explain to someone who doesn't know Smalltalk. Just go ahead and learn Smalltalk and develop your application. Once it is nearly finished then you can figure out how to make your application standalone, and by that time it will not seem complicated to you. Laborious, but not complicated.
Smalltalk is the opposite of C in this respect. C makes it trivial to make a standalone application and very hard to make an application with built in debugging. Smalltalk makes it easy to make an application with built in debugging and harder to make a standalone application. Overall, it is a lot easier in Smalltalk.
-Ralph Johnson
email@noblebell.com wrote:
Hello,
I am new to Smalltalk and want to learn it. I have experience in C# and Java and BASIC of various flavors. I downloaded the Dolphin Smalltalk system for Windows and went through some of the tutorials. I really got discouraged by the hefty price tags of both Dolphin and Cincom.
My question, can I develop shareware applications in Squeak that are standalone and also crossplatform?
Firstly, in my opinion Smalltalk is far superior to C#, Java and BASIC :-). But then again, that's just my opinion.
You can develop shareware applications in Squeak, and they're mostly guaranteed to be cross-platform. It's possible that you may come across OS-dependant behaviour if you use external interfaces such as TCP/IP, files, 3-D graphics etc, but this applies to all programming languages.
To distribute your applications, you have several options:
1. You could distribute your "image". This is essentially a snapshot of your application, and makes it trivial for somebody else to run your application. For examples of images, see the "Pre-configured images" section of http://www.squeak.org/Download/. Images range from 4MB up to 100MB depending on how much stuff you put in them.
2. You can distribute "Monticello" files (.mcz files). These are what we developers use to share code with each other, but aren't too difficult for ordinary users to load. Monticello files range from a few kilobytes to a few megabytes (if you try really hard :-) ). Examples of these are splattered all over http://www.squeaksource.com.
3. You can save Morphic projects as .pr files. I don't know much about these. I think there was something in Squeak called "Bobs super swiki" or something which lets you play with these, but that may be obsolete by now.
Regards, Michael.
El 4/26/07 9:38 PM, "Michael van der Gulik" mikevdg@gulik.co.nz escribió:
- You can save Morphic projects as .pr files. I don't know much about
these. I think there was something in Squeak called "Bobs super swiki" or something which lets you play with these, but that may be obsolete by now.
Not true. .pr files are used. I just put my experimental 3.10 image without Etoys and Nebraska and a couple of old projects converted for use with this image. People could see what a lot of fun is possible without Etoys.
What IS true is what .pr files usually works without problems between same versions of Squeak.
That is projects saved with 3.8 image works fine in another 3.8 image. Using the project in 3.7 is impossible. Using the project in 3.9 or 3.10 could work some times or you need more Squeak what a newbie have in some cases.
Edgar
beginners@lists.squeakfoundation.org
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Edgar J. De Cleene -
email＠noblebell.com -
Michael van der Gulik -
Ralph Johnson