Squeak-dev August 2001

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187 participants
488 discussions

More Window Frames
by Jim Benson 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

Oh boy, more window frames stuff !!! You were wondering to yourself, "Where is all that window frame stuff we were promised?". (Or maybe not, the doctor is having a hard time treating my egomania). The next set of code is at: http://people.we.mediaone.net/trade/Zurgle/DigginIn.htm Load up the changeset, and open up some new windows. Sorry for the delay, but for the last two weeks I have had the pleasure of being on jury duty. Yes, I was dispensing a little justice, California style. Let's see, I was the alternate juror on a whiplash case. In the event that one of the *real* jurors couldn't continue with the trial (like they were bored to death in court), I was to step right in and take their place. Of course, I still had to listen to all of the testimony like a real juror, but with none of the responsibility. The trial went on for two weeks, and was called on the count of mistrial. I'm still looking for a better definition of a *complete* waste of time. They say that the wheels of justice turn slowly. Whoever said that must have used time lapse photography, because for the life of me I couldn't see them move at all. Anyway, the aforementioned change set integrates the concept of window frames into the image, and refactors SystemWindow. Note that this is highly experimental, and shouldn't really be taken very seriously yet. All of the cursor and pane resizing stuff hasn't really been handled yet, as Jesse Welton has some really good ideas on how to clean all of that nastiness up and make it multi-hand aware at the same time. You should start getting a pretty good feel for how this stuff works now. Note that different types of window frames can be implemented using this scheme. This includes the 'null' window frame if you don't really like window frames or titles. Also, if you are using pen based systems, this affords the opportunity to have window frame resizing that actually works in that environment. This is related to the fact that window resizing is triggered by mouse downs in the window frame, rather than mouse over events. Any comments welcome, Jim

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bug in 3.1 alpha
by Timothy Reaves 06 Aug '01

06 Aug '01

Hello all. I'm running 3.1 alpha VM with a 3.0 image under SuSE. I'm playing around and notice that when I bring up the appearence menu, select to keep the menu up, and play with changing the background, there is a bug. I first selected a different background color. I then clicked 'use texture background...' which changed the background. I then clicked it again. This creates a MessageNotUnderstood: asColor exception. This is repeatable. If I select another background color between clicks on the texture, all is O.K. It is just when it is clicked twice. Is this the proper way to report a bug with Squeak?

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test?
by G.J.Tielemans＠dinkel.utwente.nl 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

I see now the last to from the archive Bert Freudenberg (Re: backspace) and John Hinsley ([Ignore..) in my own email-box. Thanks, what ever you did.

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[ignore] just a test
by John Hinsley 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

Just testing: looks like the mail server's down. Who'd be a sysop? -- ****************************************************************************** Marx: "Why do Anarchists only drink herbal tea?" Proudhon: "Because all proper tea is theft." ******************************************************************************

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Re: non-programmer intro (topic drift)
by Ken Kahn 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

Roger Kenyon wrote: >It doesn't matter how >good the software is if the teacher is left out of the loop. I don't agree, though if possible it is great to keep teachers in the loop. There is lots of worthy software out there that has great educational value without involving teachers. In the 1980s, as you mentioned, there was ChipWits (which I've heard good things about but don't know), Rocky's Boots, and Robot Odyssey. More recently there have been plenty of titles that a child can master on their own without the help of a teacher or parent. I would include Incredible Machine, SimCity, The Sims, Lemmings, Droidworks, Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and Lego Mindstorms as titles that fit in Taylor's third category (computer as tutee). My view of attempts over 30 years to teach computer programming (using Logo, Smalltalk, Basic, or whatever) in elementary or middle schools is that they rarely succeed because they depend upon teachers having a deep understanding of programming. A small fraction of teachers who try are good at teaching programming. They often achieve wonderful results. So I can think of two solutions: (1) teach teachers better and (2) make programming tools that can be mastered without adult help. Being a software developer I don't know how to change society to accomplish (1) but have some ideas about how to achieve (2). ToonTalk has been mastered by many children (some as young as 6) with little or no help. While I'm proud of that achievement, the remaining problem is that most of these children understand the language primitives and how they combine but have no idea how to design and build a program. They lack the design skills and programming techniques to build what they want to build. But I'm hopeful that more learning tools and materials combined with a growing user community will alleviate this problem. Regarding Squeak, is work going on so that a child with no prior training could walk up to an installation and figure how things work? And just to avoid misunderstandings, I'm not claiming it is better to learn without the help of a knowledgeable teacher or parent - only that too often there isn't an alternative. Best, -ken

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Re: non-programmer intro (topic drift)
by Vassili Bykov 05 Aug '01

05 Aug '01

From: Roger Kenyon <edutec(a)idirect.com> > Over 20 years ago, R. P. Taylor identified 3 basic ways of using > computers in schools. I think they are still valid: > > 1. As tutor, such as drill and practice, remedial exercises, training > simulations. > > 2. As tool, such as word processors, spreadsheets, multimedia > encyclopedia CD ROM, HTML editors. > > 3. As tutee, such as macros, scripting, domain-specific programming and > any other development environments that enable the student to teach the > computer how to perform some task. I think all of these are only true if you view a computer as a cross of a microfiche reader with a calculator, designed to "aid" the learning process. This was probably OK 20 years ago. It is probably still OK now, since nothing has changed in computers in 20 years. I am questioning what "using in schools" really means and achieves. Is "using" as in spending money and having kids do (1), (2) and (3) something that is a goal in itself? Perhaps it could be achieved by doing the right thing, training teachers, giving them "edutainment" software of all kinds, evironments with robots and whatnot. But, what is the ultimate goal: the process or the result? Will following the three nicely categorized ways really make the student realize the creativity she has, learn about the world around her, and express herself in that world? What is the untimate goal -- building a more efficient pipeline to download preprocessed knowledge into students' minds, or creating an environment where students learn to *use* those minds? I am afraid the three ways above concentrate of the former much more than on the latter. Here are my specific qualms about them. 1 - Computer as a tutor. Everybody thinks different. Helping a person learn to use the cognitive and creative potentials that they have is about nurturing, not about stuffing them with correct concepts in the correct order. Computer in the role of a tutor -- in the sense of something giving instructions and controlling progress -- has as much appeal and chance of success with people as voice mail in the role of customer support. You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make him drink. 2 - Computer as a tool. This is too narrow-minded. Computer is a tool only because most people have too little imagination to think of it as anything else. After all, the whole history of technical progress was about building better tools. People rarely see what they are not used to seeing. Apple engineers of the 80-ies didn't see anything in Smalltalk except a mouse and windows, and OO technologists of the 90-ies didn't see in it anything but techniques for assembling the innards of their black box "applications" in a slightly more convenient manner then before. 3 - Computer as a tutee. What percentage of "normal" people out there enjoy teaching computers how to perform tasks? We may think it is fun and important because it is so in our little geeky world. What if I am an 8-year old who wants to sculpt, or compose, or make a cartoon, or build a rocket to fly to the moon? Will I be told to stop that and "do what's important" instead? Computer can be an environment where everything is possible -- unconstrained by physics, time, money and common sense. Using it should not be about "using a computer", rather about doing what you want to do. We certainly are not even close to that. Not when the majority of people who are comfortable using computers are programmers, and the majority of those think a powerful environment is when you have a source-level debugger. Sorry if this sounds loony or somewhat offensive to any of the previous posters. This was certainly not intended. This is just what got accumulated while looking at the kind of problems the average CS/IT crowd out there is concerned about. Cheers, --Vassili -- Vassili Bykov [|] <vassili(a)parcplace.com> VisualWorks Engineering

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test?
by G.J.Tielemans＠dinkel.utwente.nl 04 Aug '01

04 Aug '01

since several days I don't get any emails from the list

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TV
by Gary McGovern 04 Aug '01

04 Aug '01

Hello, I just have a short question. Has anyone got Squeak working with a TV channel and been able to manipulate the sounds and images ? Or anything in that direction ? Thanks! Gary

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Newbie Squeak on Mac
by Glenn S. Fisher 04 Aug '01

04 Aug '01

I'm only about 30 days into using Squeak so I'm not up to speed on all the known issues with the tool. I'm working on a Mac and noticing a strange and annoying behavior. When I move another active application window in front of the Squeak window, the Squeak window remains active, sort of. Mouse movements and clicks pass through the active application window to the Squeak window and cause menus to open, items to be selected, etc. This doesn't happen if I remember to collapse the Squeak window, so there is a work around. It's just a little annoying. I like the tool though. I'm in the streaming media business. I'm investigating using it to develop a player. I found the MP3 stuff. Has anyone done anything with the Ogg Vorbis codec in Squeak? I'd hate to waste time re inventing the wheel, so to speak. -- Glenn S. Fisher CTO Websound, Inc. 802.254.3800 ext.202 gfisher(a)websound.com

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Re: Odd performance question
by danielv＠netvision.net.il 04 Aug '01

04 Aug '01

Calculating 1000 factorial requires 1000 operations of type multiply-often-large-numbers. Calculating the printString for the previous expressions result requires ~2568 (Tim's number) operations of type get-enough-bits-from-the-binary-representation-and-convert-them-to-a-tar get-base-digit-also-using-the-remainder-from-previous-bunch-of-bits. Not so surprising the second takes much longer... BTW, if you want more details than millisecondsToRun: gives you, you can use- TimeProfileBrowser onBlock: [Transcript show: (1000 factorial)] It's a great way to learn about the system and it's bottlenecks. Ned Konz <ned(a)bike-nomad.com> wrote: > On Thursday 02 August 2001 07:25 pm, you wrote: > > Hello all. > > > > Here's a question. I take the code '1000 factorial' and do it. It takes > > 35 milliseconds (using Time MillisecondsToRun). When I take the same code > > and 'print it', it takes about 9500 milliseconds. This is two orders of > > magnatude slower! > > > > Why? Are not the same objects created, with the printing version just > > printing an ASCII representation of the final end product Object? > > Well, kinda. There's four things going on here (with timings on my machine): > > * computing the number (43 msec) > * changing this LargeInteger into a string (via printString) (7922 msec) > 99.8% of that time is spent in LargePositiveInteger>>printOn:base: > * sending it to the Transcript (3 msec) > * displaying it (flushing) the transcript (100 msec) > > As you see, the bulk of the work is computing the printString. > > -- > Ned Konz > currently: Stanwood, WA > email: ned(a)bike-nomad.com > homepage: http://bike-nomad.com

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