Squeak-dev February 2000

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163 participants
655 discussions

[GOODIE] Texture-mapped spheres
by Duane Maxwell 04 Feb '00

04 Feb '00

Change Set: Graphics-Sphere Date: 30 January 2000 Author: Duane Maxwell This changeset implements high-speed texture-mapped spheres. While that might not seem very exciting, it's an interesting hack that illustrates the strengths of Squeak's plugins. It's also useful for those all-too-frequent times when you need to rotate Mars - hopefully the distribution includes the appropriate texture maps. Mac plugin included.

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RE: Mac filetype (was Re: Type Safety (was Re: fun andempowerment ))
by Norton, Chris 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

Hi John & friends. On Thur., Feb. 03, 2000 @ 5:09 PM, John Maloney [John.Maloney(a)disney.com] wrote: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Regarding making .change files on Mac a non-TEXT file] "Since it is seldom useful to directly edit these files with a text editor (indeed, they are big enough to be unopenable by many text editors), we lose nothing by changing their file type and we might prevent a few inadvertent file-transfer mistakes." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ [Normally, I would rather bite my tongue than disagree with anyone from SqC, but on this subject, I do have a minor remark] Let me start out by saying that I am not a Mac user, so my point may be moot, however... I have had to open up and use parts of the .change file on several occasions. This requirement usually results from my having done something stupid that causes Squeak to suffer a hard crash. Whenever this happens, you loose all of your unsaved work. In my case, I ran into this problem repeatedly because of some tricky infinite recursion bugs in my code (blowing the stack invariably causes Squeak to suffer a hard crash on Win NT). In any case, the only tool I have found that can be used to open the .change file in a timely fashion has been Microsoft Word. Well, I, for one, would prefer to still be able to open this file and extract useful things from it. Since Squeak has a very difficult time with large files, my only option, barring adding better long file support to Squeak, is to use a 3rd party text editor like MS Word. So, to make a long story short, I would prefer to keep the .changes file readable. Changing its file type in the way you folks have suggested may not make the file unreadable, however. In this area, I am a neophyte. If I am mistaken, please ignore this silly note! BTW: there is a handy feature in VSE called the "recover.log" that would obviate my need to open the .change file. It is a file that is formatted like a .change file that contains a summary of all things that you've done that haven't been formally saved. Saving your image, of course, truncates this file. The beauty of the recover.log file is that it always holds the unsaved stuff and only the unsaved stuff. Perhaps now is a good time to add something like this to Squeak. Cheers! ---==> Chris

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Re: Type Safety (was Re: fun and empowerment)
by Richard A. O'Keefe 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

Open Stuffit Expander (or whatever you're using) and set up the Preferences to "never" convert files to Macintosh format, save the Preferences, and try again. Thank you ever so much. Could someone please add this information to http://squeak.cs.uiuc.edu/#download? I just discovered that http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/306 _does_ have this i8nformation, but it lists the uiuc page as the "The official Squeak Download". Again, I can't see Squeak being blamed here - it's the result of an overenthusiastic Macintosh utility arguably doing something it shouldn't, and it does the same thing to other applications and files. The irony is that I had downloaded a recent version of Stuffit Expander to make sure that all would go well. *Sigh*. While it could be said that Squeak should notice sooner and tell someone about it, it would only ever be a partial solution to someone else's problem. It's not some*one* else's problem, it's a whole raft of other people's problems. There are lots of ways files can get mangled when you ship them around the Internet and use an operating system (MacOs) that occasionally hangs in the middle of who-knows-what. Perhaps SqC will someday see fit to set the file types of these files to something a little less likely to provoke's UnStuffIt's friskiness. What a good idea. On the subject of types, I've finally understood the "types are constraining" argument. If you look at the Smalltalk-80 collection classes, they're a mess. Extremely useful, I grant you. But they are also extremely confusing, because the designers did not believe that "if X is a subclass of Y, then X should support all the protocols of Y". A typeful language, such as Eiffel or Haskell, would have a terrible time with these classes, and that's *GOOD*, because so do I. In other words, (good) type systems are there to enforce a certain kind of consistency in design, with no exceptions. That *is* a constraint on designers, but it makes life a lot simpler for people *using* the classes. There are weak type systems, which burden the designer without giving the library user any useful guarantees. C springs to mind, pounding its chest and coughing horribly, but so does Pascal. There are strong type systems which are inexpressive, so that the designer is limited in fairly useless ways without being able to state (and have guaranteed) many useful high level constraints. Java leaps to mind, strutting and flashing its chains and pierced nipples. (A well designed type system neither allows nor needs casts.) There are type systems which give the compiler lots of help without giving library users many guarantees. There I'm thinking of the type inference system in the Stalin compiler for Scheme. It produces spectacularly efficient code, starting from a source language with pure latent typing like Smalltalk. But it does not protect the programmer from himself, or from other programmers. The interesting questions then are what kinds of *good* designs are ruled out by a type system, and whether/how the type system could be changed to allow what is good about them.

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Re: Mac file types, was Re: Type Safety (was Re: fun andempowerment)
by Les Tyrrell 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

"Andrew P. Black" wrote: > File types are intended to characterize the type of information in > the file. Images are not the same thing as changes files. The VM > expects an image file, not a changes file. And I guess that a > changes file, a sources file and a fileout all have different > formats, so they should have three different type codes? No- the .changes, .sources, and file-outs SHOULD be in the same format. However, currently this is not quite the case. This is due to ( among other things ) a bug which I've just recently pointed out regarding the storage of class comments. All are basically the same sort of animal, but store code in what are basically different "phases" of it's life- initially it is introduced to you as a file-in, at which point it enters your .changes, and at some point you could compress your own sources, wherein it enters .sources . -les

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(1 to: self) inject: 1 into: #*
by Mats Nygren 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

Hello, I find the following elegant: aCollection inject: 1 into: #* (and similarly for all binary messages and single-keyword messages) more so than the normal: aCollection inject: 1 into: [ :a :b | a * b] For example like this: factorial (1 to: self) inject: 1 into: #* The price for this seems to be simply: !Symbol methodsFor: 'converting' stamp: 'mn 1/19/2000 19:38'! value: i value: ii ^i perform: self with: ii! ! And similarly for unary messages aCollection collect: #negated What do you think? /Mats Nygren

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RE: Standard Squeak Font Encodings
by Norton, Chris 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

Hi Folks. On Tues., Feb. 01, 2000 10:53 PM, Joe Blask [argon(a)massnet1.net] wrote: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "I also would like an alternative set of character encodings so that I could display underscores and caret characters for non-code environments. This would be useful for say, displaying filenames in directories." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I heartily 2nd the motion. I find it irritating to see the underscore represented as an arrow in paths and strings. Perhaps if there were a String modifier (printWithUnderscores?) that could be called on printable strings that replaced -> with _, that would do it for me. ---==> Chris

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Re: Perl open source contest
by Lex Spoon 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

"Lex Spoon" <lex(a)cc.gatech.edu> wrote: > > FWIW, Python is basically Smalltalk without the GUI. Ouch. So it's not as similar as I thought. But I'll back it up a little even so: 1. Compared to *Perl*. Python is extremely like Smalltalk. The subject said Perl, so it was at least worth pointing out. 2. Compared to other OO languages like C++ or Java, Python still has a lot of Smalltalk's charms. It doesn't have static type checking. It leaves everything as an object, even if you can't extend system classes--thus you can stick an integer into a generic collection. Really, if you had to pick one language other than Smalltalk to work in, what would it be? I haven't worked extensively in Python, but it was what I used before a good open-source Smalltalk became available (yay Squeak!). Lex

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Re: MVC is Dead?
by Charles-A. Rovira 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

Hello Vassili, sorry I missed you in New York. I wouldn't have been much fun as I'd just finished class and felt a bit "washed out." If you checked your messages, you know I did show up... (My regards to Angela. :-) You should know the feats of memory that human beings are capable of when remembering old comedy shows :-) (How do you keep an Englishman entertained in his dotage? Tell him a joke when he's young.) You should ask Mr. Jarvis if he knows the "memories skit" which begins "Who'd've thought thirty year ago we'd all be sitting here drinking 'Chateau Le Chassolet' eh Obediah?" That one is as unforgetable as the object answered by the add: method of the Collection hierarchy. -Charles-A.

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Re: RE: Generating source code from Morphs [was: RE: More Widgets for Squeak....]
by Marcel Weiher 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

> From: agree(a)carltonfields.com > > As to overall architecture, it is posible that Marcel's -- yes, I'll say it :-) -- > filter streams, may be useful to that end. You can say EncodingFilters if you want to :-) That's what they're called in the image nowadays. Anyway, I have to admit that this wasn't something I had in mind when building them, and I'm not quite sure how they would fit (in re-creating morphs that were assembled by hand). I am of course extremely curious. What did you have in mind? Marcel

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MVC Code Request
by Andrew C. Greenberg 03 Feb '00

03 Feb '00

I should like to present a modal dialog in which unchangable text is displayed in a scrolling pane window, and two buttons are presented (call them, OK and CANCEL), thereby returning a value to a calling process, which value corresponds to the button that was pushed. Is there a simple or simplest way to accomplish this in MVC?

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