Squeak-dev January 1998

squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org

81 participants
196 discussions

Hello fellow Squeakers!
by John-Reed Maffeo 17 Jan '98

17 Jan '98

Hello fellow Squeakers! I say that with pride now because last night I finally got a rough version of the TowersOfHanoi program to work!!! My work was based on a copy of the program that I downloaded from the Smalltalk archive at ftp.wustl.edu/ hanoi 16529 usenet/st80_pre4/hanoi.st Towers of Hanoi game -Dr Kevin Waite <kww(a)cs.glasgow.ac.uk> 2.5 Syntax changes were required in several methods and several methods needed to be moved to other classes. My effort was greatly aided by another program that I got to run prior to this which was also downloaded from the SA by ikp(a)cs.man.ac.uk which i can't find the reference to right now. MVC-Wires only needed a few syntax tweeks to get running. Once wires was running I was able to see what kind of changes I needed to make to get hanoi running. One thing that I have learned so far is the necessity to really know the classes and methods or else one is going to reinvent a lot of RoundThingsUsedForTransportation. <insert appropriate Squeat salutation here> John-Reed Maffeo

1 0

Windows API calls for Squeak 1.23
by Alejandro F. Reimondo 14 Jan '98

14 Jan '98

***New Update*** I've updated the package with external structures support. External structures are structures (like C struct) but in external memory (outside the Squeak memory). It can be used for buffers outside the Garbage Collector arena. Some [little]changes and code reorganization has been done to insolate kernel and vsw310 parts. You can download the package (191kb) from SUGAR (Smalltalk User Group of ARgentina) http://www.sugarweb.com/Miniatures/Files/SqApis.Zip Ale. ***Nueva actualizacion*** He actualizado el paquete agregandole soporte para estructuras externas. Estas son estructuras en area de memoria externa (fuera del area de memoria de Squeak). Estas estructuras pueden usarse para la creacion de buffers en areas fijas de memoria (fuera del Garbage Collector). He hecho ademas algunos [pequenios]cambios y una reorganizacion para hacerlo un poco mas modular. Para bajar el paquete visiten SUGAR en http://www.sugarWeb.com El paquete comprimido esta en http://www.sugarweb.com/Miniatures/Files/SqApis.Zip Ale.

1 0

Does Squeak stream objects?
by jarvisb＠timken.com 14 Jan '98

14 Jan '98

Check the Object Storage category. It may not be everything you want but perhaps it's a start. *************************** Attachment *********************************** Date: 14 January 1998, 00:54:34 EST >From Will Hartung vfr750 at INTERNET vfr750(a)netcom.com squeak at INTERNET squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu To: squeak at INTERNET squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu cc: recipien at INTERNET recipient.list.not.shown:@ Reply-To squeak at INTERNET squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu Subject: Does Squeak stream objects? Resent-Date: 14 Jan 1998 05:54:33 -0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Resent-Message-Id: <"i4j3pD.A.iND.TMFv0"@jerry> X-Loop: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu Precedence: list On the NeXT, they had a routine called WriteObject that would use an objects write: method to write itself out to a binary stream. It seemed fairly crafty, as you typed each element of the class you were writing (int, char *, object id). If you happened to have a List object, and did a WriteObject on it, it would write the List, as well as its contents out to the stream. When you performed a ReadObject, it would recreate everything that was written out. Does Squeak have a similiar process built in? Does it handle cycles/graphs? Thanx, Will Hartung (vfr750(a)netcom.com)

1 0

Re: Does Squeak stream objects?
by Bolot Kerimbaev 14 Jan '98

14 Jan '98

I suppose you can use ReferenceStream in the following manner: (this code fragment is from Mark Guzdial's PluggableWebServer) saveTo: filename |f| f := ReferenceStream fileNamed: filename. f nextPut: self map. " can put your own object instead of (self map) " f close. restoreFrom: filename f := ReferenceStream fileNamed: filename. self map: f next. " (f next) reads the next object " f close. ReferenceStream handles objects that contain objects, etc., and even handles loops. -- Bolot Kerimbaev http://bolotiq.freenet.kg/

1 0

Re: Serial Port access from Squeak
by Todd Coram 14 Jan '98

14 Jan '98

Andreas Raab wrote: > > Does the DC20 come with any kind of device driver? My feeling is that a > > cleaner implementation would involve some kind of driver written in a > > language like C or C++ which does the communication with the serial port > > (including polling and interrupt handling) and provides an API for Squeak to > > talk to at a higher level. > > Depends. Most of the serial devices have fairly simple interfaces and a > well written serial device interface can cover much of it. Also, writing > the driver in C requires hacking the VM and some people don't feel > experienced enough for this or (like me) just prefer a Smalltalk > implementation. This is why I was hoping to find a simple serial device method available from Squeak (something along the lines of unix's ioctl() but nicer). Besides, I want to keep the code as Squeakish as possible (more platform independent smalltalk than C)... I haven't looked at Squeak's Socket classes yet... Is there enough support in Squeak's Socket classes to "simulate" the Serial primitives? Originally I was going to develop some Serial classes in Squeak and use Sockets (connecting to a very low level Serial Port server in C) to get the camera up and running. Then, one day (soon), some kind hacker (or myself) would add true native primitive support for serial devices (ala ioctl() but nicer) into the VM. (This is still MUCH simpler than hacking interrupt driven I/O capabilities into the VM). The Serial classes developed over top of Sockets should survive the migration to the new primitives. Plus, you get "remote Serial device" support to boot ;-) -- Todd Coram (Maroc Ddot) tcoram(a)BLaCKSMITH.com | tcoram(a)pobox.com Sardonic slaughterer of sacred cows.

2 1

Bug in Comment Parsing
by William O. Dargel 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

I found that empty comments ("") are not parsed correctly. The second $" does not terminate the comment, but rather gets included as the first character of a comment that terminates wherever the next $" appears in the source. I happened to uncover this because I have used the idiom """code to ignore""" (three $" characters in a row) as a quick way to comment out some code while having it be more visible that I had done so. Only with this bug, the code wasn't being commented out. The following change fixes the bug. ------------------------------------------- 'From Squeak 1.23 of October 4, 1997 on 13 January 1998 at 4:00:06 pm'! !Scanner methodsFor: 'multi-character scans' stamp: 'wod 1/10/98 00:43'! xDoubleQuote "Collect a comment." "wod 1/10/98: Allow 'empty' comments by testing the first character for $"" rather than blindly adding it to the comment being collected." | aStream stopChar | stopChar _ 30 asCharacter. aStream _ WriteStream on: (String new: 200). self step. [hereChar == $"] whileFalse: [(hereChar == stopChar and: [source atEnd]) ifTrue: [^self offEnd: 'Unmatched comment quote']. aStream nextPut: self step.]. self step. currentComment == nil ifTrue: [currentComment _ OrderedCollection with: aStream contents] ifFalse: [currentComment add: aStream contents]. self scanToken! ! ------------------------------------------- Bill Dargel wdargel(a)shoshana.com Shoshana Technologies 100 West Joy Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105 USA

1 0

Bug in Windows Cut/Copy/Paste
by William O. Dargel 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

The Clipboard doesn't seem to be fully supported under Windows. I can copy from other applications and paste into Squeak without any problem. But, in general, text copied from Squeak can't be pasted into other Windows' applications. Has anyone else noticed this problem? I've seen it in both Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0. I did some investigating, using the Windows "ClipBook Viewer" application to see what Windows thought was in the clipboard. For example using NotePad and doing a "copy", it places the text in the Clipboard in 3 formats: "Unicode Text", "Text" and "OEM Text". Of which Unicode Text appears to be the "default". When you do a "copy" within Squeak, it only changes the "Text" format, not the other 2. And apparently when then pasting it into NotePad, it uses the "Unicode Text" and doesn't get what is in "Text". I found that if you "delete" the clipboard contents using the ClipBook Viewer application first, and then do a "copy" within Squeak, that the text will appear in all three formats (the one time). At which point it will paste OK into NotePad (for example). My guess is that a call to EmptyClipboard() before calling SetClipboardData(CF_TEXT, h) in the primitive might be a way to fix this problem. Anybody in a position to test this out? I'd hate to have to unearth my C tools if I didn't have to. :-) ------------------------------------------- Bill Dargel wdargel(a)shoshana.com Shoshana Technologies 100 West Joy Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105 USA

1 0

Re: SUCCESS! Re: PWS/Swiki in NT?
by Andreas Raab 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

Mark, That's great! I had tried PWS/Swiki on NT and Win95 before my last message and I had no problems at all. However, since these were german versions I wasn't sure if the SPs are identical. And yes, I did run it _always_ on a high port number like 8088 (this was chosen in honour of Jedi Knight ;-) Still it looks somewhat strange to me that a lower port number should not work. Andreas > > Finally found the problem why PWS and Swiki were not stable on NT. The > clue was that yesterday I got it running successfully on an NT running the > same configuration as I had used unsuccessfully last week (NT 4.0 service > release 3). So it couldn't be the VM. The difference: I installed at port > 8080. > > So I went back to other machine, and tried at 8080 instead of port 80. > SUCCESS! I guess NT, like UNIX, protects low number ports and won't let > you reliably start a server on them as a user. > > We just successfully moved a Swiki from a Mac box to an NT box (which was > more complicated than I had originally hacked, since this was the first > time that I'd moved across pathSeparators), and it's running fine. HURRAH! > > Mark > > -------------------------- > Mark Guzdial : Georgia Tech : College of Computing : Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 > (404) 894-5618 : Fax (404) 894-0673 : guzdial(a)cc.gatech.edu > http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Faculty/Mark.Guzdial.html > > > -- Linear algebra is your friend - Trigonometry is your enemy. +===== Andreas Raab ============= (raab(a)isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de) =====+ I Department of Simulation and Graphics Phone: +49 391 671 8065 I I University of Magdeburg, Germany Fax: +49 391 671 1164 I +=============< http://isgwww.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~raab >=============+

1 0

Re: Serial Port access from Squeak
by Ranjan Bagchi 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

Does the DC20 come with any kind of device driver? My feeling is that a cleaner implementation would involve some kind of driver written in a language like C or C++ which does the communication with the serial port (including polling and interrupt handling) and provides an API for Squeak to talk to at a higher level. -rj -----Original Message----- From: Todd Coram <tcoram(a)BLaCKSMITH.com> To: squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu <squeak(a)cs.uiuc.edu> Date: Monday, January 12, 1998 8:21 AM Subject: Serial Port access from Squeak >Hello All, > >A newbie question: > >I am interested in getting Squeak to control my Kodak DC20 digital >camera (This camera is cheap <$200 and fun to play with). It connects to >your computer's serial port and uses a very simple protocol (I have >written controllers using Python and TCL in less than a couple of >hours). > >My goal: Squeak + DC20 = cheap playground for digital photography. >

1 0

Re: Serial Port access from Squeak
by Todd Coram 13 Jan '98

13 Jan '98

Dan Ingalls wrote: > BASIC (and, esp, DOS) has had to deal with this for a long time. They use file names like > > "COM2:2400,N,8,1" > > to set the port specs. I wrote a whole real-time weather station controller using this kind of access. BASIC lets you test if a character is waiting with EOF, so you can poll for input, and then you can put that on a timer interrupt if you want to do other work in between. > > I think that SOME such general and portable serial access should be a priority in Squeak, but I don't know how far we'll get with real serial interrupts in the immediate future, since it tends to be somewhat complex and platform-dependent. > > - Dan I certainly don't want to get involved with kernel-level stuff (interrupts and such) at this time -- that water is too deep for me. Let me pull back a little... To implement the level of support I need to interface with a fairly simple serial device (query/response with the occasional "unsolicited event" byte) I just need to wrap system level APIs, such as: setSpeed setDataBits setParity setStopBits getByte putByte - (with appropriate flow control and queuing?) ...etc... and it would be nice to have: sendBreak setDTR rxReadyCount - (a byte is ready to read) txReadyToSend ... etc.. The interface is pretty portable and the results are pretty predictable. However, the implementation is highly system dependent. (For example, in Unix these APIs would be provided by ioctl(), read(), write(), and select() or poll()). Any queueing logic (backoff buffering until ready-to-send, etc) would be portable. Anyway, a kind reader of this list, Andy van Tol, pointed me to Alejandro F. Reimondo's Windows API for Squeak 1.23. This sounds like a good place for me to start. Since the UART does most of the work for me (buffering, flow control, etc), it isn't critical that I have "kernel level" interrupts. Most devices on a serial port (except mice, tablets and other "busy" input devices) do just fine with "user level" programming (polling, blocking, queuing, etc). Thanks for the comments. Hopefully Alejandro's work will help me out. Otherwise, I may move my work over to Unix (where I am more comfortable) and do some inital I/O primitives there. Once I work out a decent protocol for Serial access, get some (Win95 or Linux) primitives working and my camera talking, I will post the info here (if anyone is interested). Any additional insights, comments or help are welcome. -- Todd Coram (Maroc Ddot) tcoram(a)BLaCKSMITH.com | tcoram(a)pobox.com Sardonic slaughterer of sacred cows.

1 0

← Newer
1
...
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
Older →

Jump to page: