Squeak-dev November 2000

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325 discussions

Re: [BUG] Open->Morphic World (Win NT4.0sp6, VM 2.9a, Image 2.9a-2988)
by Bob Arning 27 Nov '00

27 Nov '00

On Mon, 27 Nov 2000 10:15:59 -0500 Geoffrey Corey <gcorey(a)redsky.com> wrote: >Walkback doing a right-click on the the system menu to "open -> mophic >world" > >MVCWiWPasteUpMorph invalidRect: damageRec from: aMorph > > worldState recordDamagedRect: damageRect > Geoff and others, The fix will be in the next release of updates and is included below in case you want it sooner. Cheers, Bob =====code follows===== 'From Squeak2.9alpha of 17 July 2000 [latest update: #3044] on 27 November 2000 at 10:40:54 am'! "Change Set: mvcWorldFix Date: 27 November 2000 Author: Bob Arning - guard against premature access of worldState"! !MVCWiWPasteUpMorph methodsFor: 'drawing' stamp: 'RAA 11/27/2000 10:35'! invalidRect: damageRect from: aMorph worldState ifNil: [^self]. worldState recordDamagedRect: damageRect ! !

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[BUG] Open->Morphic World (Win NT4.0sp6, VM 2.9a, Image 2.9a-2988 )
by Geoffrey Corey 27 Nov '00

27 Nov '00

Walkback doing a right-click on the the system menu to "open -> mophic world" MVCWiWPasteUpMorph invalidRect: damageRec from: aMorph worldState recordDamagedRect: damageRect worldState is nil. If I change this to self world, it will still fail because the inhierated method 'world' in PasteUpMorph checks if worldState is nil if so, it will return super world. Morph implements the super 'world' by checking if owner is nil if so, then return nil. I don't know squat about the Morphic system . . . figure those of you that have been slowing rewriting morphic could track this down a lot faster. -------------------------------------------------------------++ geoff corey systems development red sky >atlanta v 678.256.3443 f 678.256.3399 http://www.redsky.com <<Geoffrey Corey.vcf>>

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RE: jpython anyone?
by Jarvis, Robert P. (Contingent) 27 Nov '00

27 Nov '00

> From: Henrik Gedenryd [mailto:Henrik.Gedenryd@lucs.lu.se] > <snip!> > For the last 40 years, AI news stories have begun like this: > "Soon they will be here--computers that xxxx". "Don't hold > your breath" is one of my favorite American expressions. The term "artificial intelligence" seems to be used a lot to mean "anything we don't know how to do yet". Chess programs used to be "artificial intelligence" - now they're just "game programs". Language translation used to be "AI" - now it's a website. Expert systems used to be "AI" - now they're pretty common. Bob Jarvis Compuware @ Timken

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Request for mail archive jocks and other packrats
by Dan Ingalls 27 Nov '00

27 Nov '00

Folks - Several years ago, someone wrote to this list asking how to draw a map of the US from polygon descriptions, and I sent back a message that showed how to do it in morphic, and I believe I distributed a copy of his database converted to the simple format required. I seem to have lost all record of this exchange except for the simple doit below which still works just fine. If you saved the file of coordinates for the US, or know how to get it, would you please send me a copy (and maybe CC the list so everyone doesn't go rummaging)? Thanks in advance - Dan -------------------- | spec state | spec := #(1863 383 1875 375 1883 383 1879 396 1883 400 1900 417 1913 413 1904 400 1908 400 1917 417 1896 425 1892 421 1883 429 1883 421 1867 413 1854 417 1804 425 1804 396 1817 392 1829 392 1863 383 ). state := PolygonMorph vertices: (spec pairsCollect: [:x :y | x@y]) color: Color green borderWidth: 1 borderColor: Color black. World addMorph: (state position: 100@100)

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Re: School "snack" help sought
by Bob Arning 27 Nov '00

27 Nov '00

On Mon, 27 Nov 2000 11:34:46 +1300 (NZDT) "Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok(a)atlas.otago.ac.nz> wrote: >The obvious thing to do is to take the BouncingAtoms morph and hack that, >but I really have _not_ got my head around Morphic yet. > >Or any suggestions about how to do this? Richard, The first level of hacking here is easy. BouncingAtomsMorph has a #step method which runs this simulation. It in turn sends #bounceIn: aRectangle to each of the Atoms. The AtomMorph does several things in this method: - it determines if it has crossed the edge of the rectangle and updates its position and velocity to reflect bouncing off that wall. - it updates its position in any case to reflect its current movement - it returns true or false to indicate if it did bounce off a wall which enables the container to determine its temperature. You could begin hacking at this by opening a BouncingAtomsMorph. Then get a browser and look at the AtomMorph>>bounceIn: method. As you make changes to this method, you can watch the BouncingAtomsMorph to see how that affected things. Some simple things you could try: - assume one or more walls absorb energy from the collision (or add energy as in pinball) by changing one of the lines like: vx _ velocity x negated. to vx _ velocity x negated * someFactor. - or you could give each atom some goal and a limited energy supply with which to accomplish that goal. In this case you could add logic to allow an atom to decide when and how to use that energy toward its goal. - probably more of interest is allowing atoms to interact with each other. BouncingAtomsMorph has a method #collisionPairs which reports pairs of atoms that are colliding. This could be modified to report any that are "close" and be used to inform the atoms involved so that they may try to approach or avoid the other as they desire. And the fun thing is watching it happen before your eyes. Cheers, Bob

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Re: InstanceBrowser anyone ?
by Bob Arning 26 Nov '00

26 Nov '00

On Sun, 26 Nov 2000 20:45:31 +0100 Karl Ramberg <karl.ramberg(a)chello.se> wrote: >> - Debugging instances - I guess you mean here the answer to "Why is this thing still hanging around?". There is a tool for getting this info: "PointerFinder on: FreeCell someInstance" tells me why a FreeCell instance is in my image. >This I can too, but don't really understand. I have a hard time >understanding the >hiearchy and what the different things meen. Karl, If you want to get a better picture of why these are hanging around, file-in the attached method and the evaluate 'SystemWindow reportReasonForAllInstances'. This may take a while, but it will produce a report that should answer the question. Send me a copy and I'll explain the kinds of things that are causing the problem. Cheers, Bob =====code follows===== 'From Squeak2.9alpha of 17 July 2000 [latest update: #3044] on 26 November 2000 at 4:21:54 pm'! "Change Set: windowChaser Date: 26 November 2000 Author: Bob Arning Evaluate SystemWindow reportReasonForAllInstances of AnyMorphicClass reportReasonForAllInstances "! !Morph class methodsFor: 'misc' stamp: 'RAA 11/26/2000 16:18'! reportReasonForAllInstances | byWorld key equals pointers strm | (equals _ String new: 60) atAllPut: $=. byWorld _ Dictionary new. self allInstances do: [ :each | key _ each world ifNil: [''] ifNotNil: [each world printString]. (byWorld at: key ifAbsentPut: [OrderedCollection new]) add: each ]. strm _ WriteStream on: (String new: 5000). strm nextPutAll: equals; cr; nextPutAll: 'instances not in any world'; cr; nextPutAll: equals; cr; cr. byWorld at: '' ifPresent: [ :collection | 'Researching world-less morphs' displayProgressAt: Sensor cursorPoint from: 0 to: collection size during: [:bar | collection withIndexDo: [ :inst : index | bar value: index. strm nextPutAll: index printString,'. ',inst externalName; cr. pointers _ PointerFinder new goal: inst; search; pointerList. pointers do: [ :ptr | strm tab; nextPutAll: ptr printString; cr. ]. ]. ]. ]. strm cr. byWorld keysDo: [ :k | k = '' ifFalse: [ strm nextPutAll: equals; cr; nextPutAll: 'instances in world ',k; cr; nextPutAll: equals; cr; cr. (byWorld at: k) withIndexDo: [ :inst :index | strm nextPutAll: index printString,'. ',inst externalName; cr. ]. strm cr. ]. ]. StringHolder new contents: strm contents; openLabel: 'all instances of ',self printString! !

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Concurrent Comics and children's programming environment (was Re: jpython anyone?)
by Mikael Kindborg 26 Nov '00

26 Nov '00

Alan Kay <Alan.Kay(a)disney.com> wrote: > Actually, this would be a very good time for suggestions, as we are > close to trying a whole bunch of "scripting syntax" experiments. Hi all, I do research in user programming (I would like to stay away from the label "end-user" since users can create software for other users). I joined this list a week ago. I was about to write and ask where to find the tile-based programming environment, but I discovered that it is right there in the morphic world! It was fun to use, the feedback when placing tiles is very nice, and the "is over color" test opens up for a lot of creative uses. Would be useful to have a collide test too, to be able to handle sprite collisions. Maybe it is in there already, only I have not found it. My current work is focused on a field study of children's programming of social agents (10-11 year olds). I am exploring the visual language of comics as a program representation. Comics are interesting with respect to programming, because they represent something dynamic in a concrete static form. The computation model I am currently experimenting with is inspired by concurrent constraint programming. Each guarded clause is represented by a comic strip where the first frame is the guard and the successive frames are the body. I call the comic strip representation "Concurrent Comics" since the comic strips are not read in sequence, but are concurrent events. This is similar to concurrently running scripts in a morphic world. The strips are similar to rules in StageCast (KidSim), but there is no grid and the agents/processes have a local state rather than a shared global state. A major source of inspiration is ToonTalk (by Ken Kahn). ToonTalk uses an animated program representation based on cartoon characters. While using an animated source code is very innovative, a static representation can be useful for providing an overview and it is also easier to edit. Part of the work I am doing right now is comparing the animated representation with a comic strip representation. A number of working papers are available at: http://www.ida.liu.se/~mikki/comics/ (the quality varies!). A few pictures and screenshots from the field studies are available at: http://www.ida.liu.se/~mikki/comics/pictures.html Have you looked into using comic strip representations in the Squeak children's programming environment? I recently re-read a paper from OOPSLA89 by Jay Fenton and Kent Beck which has an example of a "DynaComicBook" where fish hide from a shark. I wrote Kent Beck and asked what had become of that idea and he replied that nothing had happened with it. This should be worth looking into. I believe that comics have a great potential as a program representation since it is possibly the static representation that best reflects dynamic behaviour. What I have found so far in the field studies is that children frequently come up with narrative explanations when asked to describe how a program works. The narrative thinking can sometimes be a disadvantage, since they find it hard to understand that the events described in the comic strips can happen in any order, not just in the fixed sequence in which they are defined. Possibly, the use of comics reinforce narrative interpretations. In another message Alan Kay <Alan.Kay(a)disney.com> wrote: > One of the tricks here is to get away from thinking that programs have > to be composed with only a simple text editor. > For the last several years we have been experimenting with children > doing "tile programming" (as in the current etoy authoring in Squeak). The Are there any reports or other documents that describe the results from these experiments? Are there any etoys available to play with? > idea here is that the system only lets you construct syntactically correct > programs. If this works, then the syntax can be as readable as one wishes. > This is an old idea, and the problems with this approach over the years > have been awkwardness, fatigue and distraction while trying to think > through how the program should work. > Almost by accident this time around, we took phrases derived from > message headings (with sample values inserted in the parameters as defaults) > as the basic building block. With some sweet work by SqC the act of picking > up tile phrases and dropping them in scripts became a pleasant (even somewhat > sensual) act, and we (I was anyway) quite surprised in extensive testing with > children that a far far larger percentage of them became extremely motivated > creators and programmers in this system than in 25 years of previous experience. > (There were a few other factors operating here as well that contributed to the > success of these experiments.) It would be interesting to hear more about what aspects were surprising and which factors contributed to the success. How large part of the success did the tiling system have versus the other factors? Would also be interesting to here how these recent experiences with the children differs from the early experiments with kids using Smalltalk-72. Are the programs created by the children available? > > We realized that it would be really neat to be able to make something similar > work with Squeak in general, and that an interesting way to approach a readable > yet highly learnable enduser (we call them "omniusers") syntax would be exhibit > programs in a highly readable syntax and that editing and composing would be > mediated by generalizations of the UI techniques that had worked with the children. > Quite a bit has been accomplished over the last six months, and we will > shortly release the first version of this authoring system for the critiques > of the Squeak List. Would be great to try this. Strangely, you do not see work on user programming very often any more. For instance, last CHI had no paper on this subject. Good to see that the Squeak community seems to take such a big interest in this. Best, Micke Mikael Kindborg Linköping University, Sweden

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Re: InstanceBrowser anyone ?
by Bob Arning 26 Nov '00

26 Nov '00

On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 22:49:52 +0100 Karl Ramberg <karl.ramberg(a)chello.se> wrote: >After using the excellent ProcessBrowser for a while I miss a >similar tool to kill off/ debug/ inspect instances. >I keep getting my images messed up with lots of >SystemWindows etc. hanging around for unknown reasons. Hi Karl, Some parts of what you want may already be in the image, but other parts need some clarification. - Inspecting instances is fairly easy - the browser has items in the method list menu (under 'more...') to inspect one instance, inspect all instances or inspect subinstances. Also you can always do "Blah allInstances explore". - Debugging instances - I guess you mean here the answer to "Why is this thing still hanging around?". There is a tool for getting this info: "PointerFinder on: FreeCell someInstance" tells me why a FreeCell instance is in my image. - Killing off instances - this gets a bit trickier since the technique for killing an instance may be quite specific to the particular reason the instance is still alive. Shotgun approaches like "bogusWindow become: String new" may well get rid of the bogus window, but will leave a pointer to an empty string in some place that may not be real happy with it. It would be relatively easy to recognize a few of the common cases and design appropriate killers for these, but there are endless ways that some reference could exist and cleanly handling all of these might be quite difficult. I know we have tried to work through some of these in the past with mixed success. If you wanted to let me look at one of these images, I might be able to describe better the steps involved in finding and deleting the specific problems you are having. If you'd like to try this, just put the image somewhere and send me the URL. Cheers, Bob

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Re: Squeak 2.8 for OS/2 available
by Bruce ONeel 26 Nov '00

26 Nov '00

Hi, This is up on ftp://st.cs.uiuc.edu/Smalltalk/Squeak/2.8 cheers bruce Juan Manuel Vuletich <jmvuletich(a)sinectis.com.ar> wrote: > Hi folks > > I've updated the Squeak for OS/2 package at > http://www.sugarweb.com/Squeak/Ports/OS2Native/OS2English.htm to 2.8. > > I apologize for the delay. > > Any comment is welcome. > -- > Juan Manuel Vuletich > jmvuletich(a)sinectis.com.ar > jvuletic(a)dc.uba.ar > http://www.sinectis.com.ar/u/jmvuletich > http://www.sinectis.com.ar/u/jmvuletich/studio.html

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Re: [updates] Two more for good measure
by Bruce ONeel 26 Nov '00

26 Nov '00

Hi, These changes and the previous batch of 70 or so are up in ftp://st.cs.uiuc.edu/Smalltalk/Squeak/2.9_alpha in Squeak2.9a-2988.zip. cheers bruce Dan Ingalls <Dan.Ingalls(a)disney.com> wrote: > Caught these at the last minute... > ------------------------ > 2987B3DStackBalance-ar -- Andreas Raab -- 20 November 2000 > Fixes two prims that didn't pop the appropriate number of items from the stack." > > 2988macSrcUpdates294-JMM > Brings mac VM sources up to date > ------------------------ > By the way I have another 50 changeSets, assembled by Stefan from SqueakList submissions, as yet to be released. I had to hold them while we made these last changes, and it will going to take some serious checking to avoid conflicts. > > - D

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