etoys-dev April 2008

etoys-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

28 participants
42 discussions

Re: [Etoys] etoys performance problems
by Ties Stuij 08 Apr '08

08 Apr '08

> I'll try to modify the code so that .pr file may not have to be > compressed and see if how much we gain. Ah nice, that happens to be what I'm working on as well. I've got some patches to play around with which disable either zipping the project file or the bundle, and subsequently only delivers the .pr file (Oh, the confusion, naming both the project bundle as well as the project file <pr-name>.pr). Hopefully tomorrow I'll give an account of my performance findings while testing different combinations of zipping. As an intermediate report, totally unzipping a .pr file almost doubles loading on my mac, but loading on an XO has been slightly disappointing. Small projects were up to 2 times as fast to load, but the bigger ones were a quarter as slow. Attached are some other patches related to zipping: 1) fileIn fix In order to load a project bundle with an non-zipped .pr file in it, you've got to change the type of stream to create in projectStreamFromArchive from RWBinaryOrTextStream to MultiByteBinaryOrTextStream, since that's the class the project loading methods are defined on. 2) asUnzippedStream changes uptoEndWithProgressBar to uptoEnd in the method with the same name as the changeset to get a 20 percent increase in project loading. These patches are part of my 'one patch per day' project, that will run from now till into the not at all to distant future. /Ties

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Re: [Etoys] [Squeakland] Re: Etoys by Example
by Dave Bauer 08 Apr '08

08 Apr '08

http://squeakland.org/sqmedia/books/squeakerbooks.html You can print the PDFS of the projects in Powerful Ideas in the Classroom. There are some really good examples in there. Maybe it would make sense to make that book availalbe from Lulu.com if people wanted to have a book. Dave On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr <jecel(a)merlintec.com> wrote: > Joe Apuzzo wrote: > > So what is becoming obvious to me is the lack of Etoys information in > > one place, like "Squeak by Example" book is. > > See "Children Learning by Doing: Squeak Etoys on the OLPC XO" at: > > http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.htm > > What you want is half done. > > -- Jecel > > _______________________________________________ > Squeakland mailing list > Squeakland(a)squeakland.org > http://squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland > -- Dave Bauer dave(a)solutiongrove.com http://www.solutiongrove.com

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[Etoys] So what does everyone use in the classroom?
by Joe Apuzzo 07 Apr '08

07 Apr '08

With eToys dead ( not updated in over 2 years ) And no books in print. What have teachers replaced eToys with? ( seeing that Squeak is a dead language ) Joe Apuzzo Gnu_Joe www.mhvlug.org

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[Etoys] Multiple language fallback
by Bert Freudenberg 07 Apr '08

07 Apr '08

Takashi, Korakurider, do we support this in Etoys? If not, what would need to be done to allow it? - Bert - Begin forwarded message: > From: Khaled Hosny <khaledhosny(a)eglug.org> > Date: 5. April 2008 12:05:20 MESZ > To: Bert Freudenberg <bert(a)freudenbergs.de> > Cc: Localization mailing list <localization(a)lists.laptop.org> > Subject: Re: [Localization] code comments? > > Yes, by setting LANGUAGE env variable with a fall back language, > some thing > like "LANGUAGE=ur_PK:fa_IR:ar", you can specify multiple fall back > languages. > > On Sat, Apr 05, 2008 at 09:31:30AM +0200, Bert Freudenberg wrote: >> ... which reminds me: Is it possible in gettext to fall back on a >> language other than English when a translation for some phrase cannot >> be found? That would be a useful feature I think, as long as there >> are >> programs that are not fully translated (which will happen very >> often). >> >> - Bert -

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[Etoys] suppressing auto phrase expansion in playfield
by K. K. Subramaniam 07 Apr '08

07 Apr '08

Hi, I am unable to suppress sprouting of scriptors around dropped phrase tiles in playfields by turning auto-phrase expansion option off. This used to work in the Squeakland images. Is this a bug or is it working as designed? This is in EToys 2.3#1896/non-XO. Subbu

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[Etoys] Viewer on Morph, Viewer on Object?
by polishookm 06 Apr '08

06 Apr '08

I think I've been seeing an option for a viewer on an object as well as the viewer on morph. But the viewer on object option seems to have disappeared from my etoys-dev.image. .... Can someone tell me where to find it? (Where should it be .... I think I've been accessing it from debug through a halo). Thanks in advance, Mark

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[Etoys] Matrix morph idea
by karl 05 Apr '08

05 Apr '08

Holders are a great tool and is kind of a all round collection, it grows and shrinks when elements are added,and elements are pushed up and left. This works great but I was wondering if an matrix kind of Holder would be interesting, where each cell is numbered and it would be possible to reference positions etc. Kind of a Kedama but with possibility to drag and drop object onto the grid, to make tile games like checkers. One benefit of a matrix would be that it would be easier to check for patterns in the grid and thereby make simple computer players. What do you think ? Karl

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[Etoys] etoys performance problems
by Ties Stuij 05 Apr '08

05 Apr '08

He lists (crossposting to Etoys and Squeak dev due to relevance for both), One can say that I am sort of taking over from Luke (Gorrie) as OLE Nepal's Etoys performance optimizer (optimizator?). And I'd like to give a status update, but I would especially like some advice on some issues. And the sooner the better. Cause we at OLE Nepal are in dire straits; we've got major performance issues, some of which are Etoys related, and some of which are Squeak related. And the reason for the speed is that we're gonna have to have a working XO build in a few days cause we have to train teachers, and in te beginning of April we're gonna flash a build to the machines of the children of the pilot schools, who will use it in the classrooms. So without further ado, except for this redundant sentence: project loading To start with the known, I've been looking into the project loading times, and have managed to cut them in half by removing the gzipping on the project files and just using the .pr file in stead of the zip which claims to be a .pr. Now this might of course not be the perfect solution for all, I did uncover some practices on which I'd like either the opinion of Squeak people in general or that of the Etoys people in particular. First, I noticed (together with Luke, who showed me the debugging ropes) that in the method asUnzippedStream, on ReadWriteStream, the method upToEndWithProgressBar uses '/' an awful lot to give the the right approximation to the progress bar. It sucked about 20 percent of the total loading time of an activity. So I changed upToEndWithProgressBar for upToEnd. Which seems like a more reasonable default 'cause I'd guess that usually one won't actually use the progress bar functionality. But thats not the end of it Etoys-wise. 'Cause it turns out an Etoys project file is gzipped twice. First the individual file in 'writeForExportWithSources:inDirectory:' and then the containing function writeForExportWithSources:inDirectory: as part of the .pr bundle. And this for a file that already has lots of it's contents compressed, seeing that most of the project file is taken up by jpegs. And this would ideally also be the case for sound files, but more on that later. The size decrease due to zipping in general is not more than 10%. So my question on this topic is: is there an argument for retaining the double zipping? And would there be a general need for a 'just save an uncompressed .pr file, instead of a bundle' option/patch? project deletion/memory growth Our second issue is related to memory growth within the Etoys image that's causing problems for the, let us say, memory-challenged XO. First of all we've got a, say, root project, which enumerates the activities which it reads from a few directories. In that root project we've got a script running that deletes child projects. Or it should anyway. The key method here is okToChange, which i guess is a bit of a misnomer. That is it's got a bunch of code in it that should remove a project and it's content from the image, but it doesn't. To make it concrete: we've got this script running in the root project: unloadActivitiesToFreeSpace Project current children do: [:t1 | t1 okToChange] "or okToChangeSilently, but okToChange is nice for debugging" But after removing a project, executing 'Project allInstances' shows that there is still a reference to the project and when one keeps an eye on the memory usage (with an OSX utility), we see that no memory is deallocated. So the image grows and grows. So my concrete question is: how can one for once and for all delete a project instance. I was hoping to at least find some generic deleteInstance method in the image, but I couldn't find one (I'm a bit of a Squeak newbie). Then it seems to me that the image grows quite fast in general. Is there some known garbage collection problem concerning Squeak or Etoys that I should know about? And related; when I'm gonna try and trim down the image size: any suggestions on where to start? Is there any known fat waiting to be caved off? Sound format Another strategy to trimming down the image size is using a compressed sound format. At the moment we use wav for sound right? If I'm wrong, excuse me, but I haven't had time to investigate the matter to thourougly. Anyways, since a number of activities have quite a few samples in them, ranging from short utterings to long sentences, it would be very worth while if we could use a compressed format. From the mailinglist I read rumours about Ogg plugin and a gstreamer plugin... Is it already possible to use Ogg files in Etoys? If so how? I'd already be happy with general directions. Well that's perhaps a bit more than quite enough questions for one post. I'll save some for later. It goes without saying that any advice on these topics would be greatly appreciated. /Ties

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[Etoys] Physics Objects and Squeak 3.10
by Joe Apuzzo 03 Apr '08

03 Apr '08

I'm new to the list and have slowly been learning Squeak over the last few weeks. I want to develop lessons for kids starting in 3rd grade up to 5th grade ( thus using eToys as the main interface ) I recently came across Phun ( http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki ) which is a really great Physics simulator. But it's a toy and lacks the rich environment that Squeak has for introducing, planning and accomplishing a "class project". I know that there is ODECo for Squeak ( http://languagegame.org:8888/ggame/15 ) but 1) It only runs at on 3.7 2) Only has a few objects to work with 3) Does not have settings for friction, density and bounce 4) Does not have the concept of liquid and gas Therefor is there any work on adding objects to eToys that have Physics attributes like those in Phun? If not, is anyone interested? Yours humbly; Gnu Joe Joseph Apuzzo www.mhvlug.org

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[Etoys] Hackontest Announcement: Form a team, implement sth. useful and win a trip to Zurich
by Markus Gälli 03 Apr '08

03 Apr '08

Hi folks I've just added Squeak to the "Hackontest" open source gathering- competing-whatever-event which should happen in Zurich this September. Bottom line: Come to Switzerland this summer and get your trip paid from this well know advertisement company by adding some cool feature to anything Squeak. Cheers Markus Anfang der weitergeleiteten E-Mail: > Von: Matthias Stürmer <matthias.stuermer(a)ch-open.ch> > Datum: 2. April 2008 14:12:27 GMT+02:00 > An: Hackontest <contact(a)hackontest.org> > Betreff: Hackontest Announcement > > Dear open source project coordinators > > /ch/open is happy to announce the going-live of the Hackontest > platform. > You're warmly invited to participate on http://hackontest.org [1] and > submit your project, feature requests, and comments. [2] > > Hackontest is a 24-hour open source coding competition taking place > during the next OpenExpo in Zurich on September 24/25, 2008. Three > teams > of different open source projects are required to implement a certain > feature for their Free Software project within 24 hours. In order to > select the participating projects, features and programmers the > Hackontest platform allows everyone to submit feature requests for > projects and rate and comment on them. When a developer feels that > he is > capable implementing a feature, he can sign up and thus becomes a > candidate for the participation in the Hackontest event. Most of the > decisions are made by the Hackontest jury which consists of ten > renowned > open source hackers: > > Jeremy Allison, Samba > Jono Bacon, Ubuntu > Brian W. Fitzpatrick, Subversion > Martin F. Krafft, Debian > Alexander Limi, Plone > Federico Mena-Quintero, GNOME > Bram Moolenaar, vim > Bruce Perens, OSI founder > Lukas K. Smith, PHP > Harald Welte, gpl-violations.org > > On August 1st 2008, the Hackontest jury will look at the submitted > projects and developers and choose the three participating developer > teams - three persons each - according the features ranked highest and > the most promising hacker profiles. Until shortly before the > Hackontest > event the rating and commenting of the features may continue. On > September 24th, the open source teams gather in one room at > OpenExpo and > start to implement the feature the jury will select. Connected to > their > community through the Internet the teams start to code for one day. > After 24 hours they present the new feature to the audience, the jury > reviews the code and announces the Hackontest winners. > > The teams receive cash prizes of USD 1000, 2500 and 5000. Also the > Hackontest participants get a free trip to beautiful Switzerland, > accommodation and meals during the Hackontest days. > > As Hackontest hast just been released to public, we're thankful if you > spread the word within your communities and personal contacts. > > All the best, > > Matthias Stürmer > > > > [1] As this web application is written from scratch, there might be > still some bugs and usability issues. Please send any suggestions > on how > to improve the platform or anything else concerning Hackontest to > contact(a)hackontest.org > > [2] I filed some 'demo' projects and features. If you'd like to take > over a project, let me know and I'll change the owner. > > -- > Matthias Stürmer | matthias.stuermer(a)ch-open.ch | +41 76 368 81 65 > /ch/open | Swiss Open Systems User Group | http://www.ch-open.ch > Postfach 2322 | CH-8033 Zürich | info(a)ch-open.ch | +41 44 350 26 56 >

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etoys-dev April 2008