Hi--
After a hiatus to work on a natural-language interpreter ("Quoth", premiered earlier this month at Transmediale in Berlin), I got back to the task of making the first Spoon modules.
The very first one is a sort of "hello world" for graphics. It does this:
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Display fill: Display boundingBox rule: Form over fillColor: Color red
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Since my target, before loading the module, is headless without any graphics support at all (not even BitBLT or DisplayScreen, see http://www.netjam.org/spoon/notes/survivors for a list of the surviving classes), getting there is a bit of a wild ride. My plan is as follows:
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1. implement bi-directional message sending
Up until now, I'd just been sending remote messages *to* the headless system from a headful one (mostly system browsers ripping things out of the headless system). Now I want to send messages in both directions, so that I can...
2. make remote debugging work
I could sorta limp along trapping messages not understood in the C debugger, but that has gotten tedious. :) Also, I'm pretty sure I'll want to be able to use a normal Smalltalk debugger to debug processes in the headless system from the headful one, to debug the inevitable initial glitches with...
3. imprinting onto the headless target
So far my imprinting experiments have been between two headful systems (so that I could debug comfortably). Once this works with a headless system, I can...
4. imprint the "hello world for graphics" expression onto the headless system (creating a module for all the required behavior as a side-effect)
Then I can...
5. run the "hello world for graphics" expression in the headless system (and transfer its module to other headless systems)
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Today I made part one work. I successfully sent a message from a headful system to a headless system, which answered the result of a message sent from the headless system to the headful system. It's an exciting step!
thanks,
-C
-- Craig Latta improvisational musical informaticist craig@netjam.org www.netjam.org [|] Proceed for Truth!
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