Squeak-dev April 2002

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195 participants
665 discussions

Re: straw-man 3.2 default preferences
by Jon Hylands 28 Apr '02

28 Apr '02

At Friday, 19 April 2002, you wrote: >My experience has been the opposite of Jon's: right from the start, I >was enamored of Squeak's multicolored windows. Rather than >"discordant", I would instead use the adjectives "gay" or "festive". >I don't think that Squeak's color scheme is ugly, only different. It >would be a mistake for the Squeak community to hide its personality by >trading its gypsy garb for a three piece suit. I don't view it that way at all (gypsy garb vs. 3-piece suit). For me, graphic design is about clean and simple lines, where the content of whatever you are looking at is the most important thing. As might be expected, I've tried to mirror that philosophy with my web site design... >The colored windows also provide a visual cue about their function >("Where did I put that selector finder? Oh, I see its blue corner >sticking out there"). When the windows were a solid color, one could >argue that the text was somewhat harder to read, but that is no longer >the case. There are other ways to solve that problem, including a window-finder like Windows has (Alt-Tab), or something similar to that. XP has a nice new feature that automatically organizes the open-window icons in the task bar by application, so they are grouped more or less by functionality. >New users who can't deal with colors that are different from what they >are accustomed to will probably also not be able to deal with the >fundamentally different philosophy of computing embodied by Squeak. Well, I'm not convinced of that. That certainly holds for a class of new users, but the bunch I'm interested in are the hard-core programmers who are looking at Squeak for the first time. If they try Squeak and like it, they will probably talk about it in the other online communities they belong to, and positive praise from people like that that will probably spread the word faster than anything. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is to point out that there are differences in what people prefer, and we might want to make the mechanism for changing certain things like the window color and scroll bar locations much more obvious for a new user. It would be nice if the Preferences window could set *all* the preferences, including the window colors, the fonts, the background, etc. I'm going to dive into 3.2 this weekend to work on the web browser stuff, so maybe that would be a good time to work on a more comprehensive preferences window while I'm at it... Later, Jon -------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Hylands Jon(a)huv.com http://www.huv.com/jon Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) http://www.huv.com

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RE: How do you define "object-oriented"?
by Jarvis, Robert P. (Contingent) 28 Apr '02

28 Apr '02

> From: Kevin Fisher [mailto:kgf@golden.net] > > Or rather--if it's not objective right down to the smallest particle, > can it be called object-oriented? I don't think I'd go quite that far. Back when I was starting to learn about OO I found a definition which I think is pretty good: A language is object-oriented if it supports 1. Encapsulation 2. Inheritance 3. Polymorphism By this definition C++ and Java are object-oriented even though they expose atomic data types. My experience has been that it is much easier and more productive to work in an object-oriented language which doesn't clutter up the landscape with 'int's and 'char's. On the other hand I'm known for being a bit dense and perhaps (despite my years of apparent success with 'int' and 'char'-ridden languages) I just don't get it. Or maybe I *do* get it and it's the 'int' and 'char'-obsessed language designers who are clueless. Beats me - I'm nearsighted and keep blundering into these tall things with rough brown outer coverings and occasional bits of greenery. YMMV. > (and then there's the other question about why all new > languages go out of their way to be so C-like...a personal > beef of mine. :) I imagine there are several ways to look at this: 1. Copying is so much easier than thinking. 2. You can spot the pioneers by the arrows in their backs. 3. I have taken the road less traveled, and it has made all the difference. 4. The shortest way to a programmer's heart is through C. Again, YMMV. ********************************************************************** This message and any attachments are intended for the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, please do not forward, copy, print, use or disclose this communication to others; also please notify the sender by replying to this message, and then delete it from your system. The Timken Company **********************************************************************

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Proposal for TWO official releases
by Maarten Maartensz 28 Apr '02

28 Apr '02

Hello, Summarizing the drift of some recent mails I'd propose the following to both Squeak.org and the Squakfoundation: - To maintain TWO releases as a standard policy: A. Developers' release B. Learning & Teaching release where (A) is what we have at present, is intended for knowledgeable Squeakers, and is short of documentation, and (B) comes with a LOT of documentation written inside Squeak as Active Essays and is explicitly targetted at Newbies, University courses, and learning to program. (After all, Squeak provides better facilities for its own documentation than any other language + environment I know.) Part of (B) would be a generally cleaned-up (refactored, debugged) image, that also includes Class Comments (written in clear English, please WITHOUT prose like "I am (a piece of code that) ... " and WITH plenty examples that can be run from the Comments. (Indeed, if this proposal (B) gets going it might take the form of several images, like several volumes of a book.) A good start for (B) would be to have a look at the issues of Squeak News, and one important consideration is that the contents of (B) should be not only be relatively bug-free, stable and well-commented, but also should be written in clear English and be explicitly addressed at people with little or no programming experience, while giving them a "hands on" introduction to computing with Squeak in the form of Active Essays, that show and illustrate the code they explain. To achieve (B) will need some coordinated effort, and seems to me to be a worthy target for the SqueakFoundation as a first important project. Also, to be succesfull it needs to be at least somewhat decently written and to presuppose little or no inital knowledge of Smalltalk or programming. Good starts where to look for relevant material, ideas and approaches are the issues Squeak News and projects on Bob Arnings' Superswiki. Finally (somewhat) in the present context: I agree with Lex Spoon's recent remark to the effect that "open source" is a more comprehensive term than the OpenSource.org admits, and that Squeak IS patently open source in coming with its source code. I think it unwise to restrict the meaning of "open source" to what gets the blessing of the OpenSource.org: The basic principle of open source applications, after all, is that one gets to see and manipulate all the code of the application and not whether OpenSource.org or Richard Stallmann are willing to endorse it as open source in THEIR preferred senses. Regards, Maarten. ------------------------------------------ Maarten Maartensz. Homepage: http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ ------------------------------------------

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RE: RFD : comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak
by Hannes Hirzel 28 Apr '02

28 Apr '02

Martin McClure <martin(a)hand2mouse.com> wrote: > At 5:38 PM -0400 4/19/02, Swan, Dean wrote: > >This topic comes up every once-in-a while. It seems that the > >consensus always comes up that the mailing list is the preferred > >format and news groups attract too much spam. This would be my > >position as well. The lists are archived, so those who don't wish > >to, or are unable to deal with the mail volume can go to the > >archives. > > That's my recollection of previous discussions also: That none of the > existing discussion forums would benefit from being split, that a > mailing list was preferred over a newsgroup anyway, and therefore > that a Squeak newsgroup would be a step *away* from the ideal. > I prefer keeping the mailing list as well. My main argument: I switched to using Celester some weeks ago and I like to stay in the Squeak environment when communicating with my Squeak colleagues. The collection of mails will develop in a offline support database when indexed properly with tags and keywords (however full text search is allways possible) and I like the fact that I can execute code snippets directly from the mail reader. I consider this to be unique (world-wide; or does anybody know of another system which allows this?). Functionally the mailing list plus the archives http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/775 is equivalent to a newsgroup isn't it? Regards Hannes P.S. This assumes that you know how to set up incoming filters in your preferred mail reader or that you set up a mail account just for participating on the Squeak list while using Celeste as I do at the moment. To sum up: Main argument against newsgroup: The mailing list is better integrated in the Squeak developing process.

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Looking for autocompletion widget
by Ross Boylan 28 Apr '02

28 Apr '02

Is there a morphic widget that will attempt to complete a field as you type it in? In other word, it has a list of possible values, and as you type letters it shows the first one that matches. You can keep typing to refine the selection. Refinements might include a dropdown list of all the values, and also an option that would either permit or deny entry of values not in the list.

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Re: [Q][morphic] LayoutPolicy and LayoutFrame
by Hannes Hirzel 28 Apr '02

28 Apr '02

Ned Konz <ned(a)bike-nomad.com> wrote: > On Saturday 27 April 2002 01:09 pm, Martin Drautzburg wrote: > > Ned Konz <ned(a)bike-nomad.com> writes: > > > You can just turn on TableLayout and set the layoutInset > > > > > > self layoutPolicy: TableLayout new. > > > self addMorph: otherMorph. > > > self layoutInset: 10@10. > > > self layoutChanged. > > > > This does not resize the otherMorph. TableLayout just does not do > > this, right ? > > Well, I omitted the > > otherMorph vResizing: #spaceFill; hResizing: #spaceFill > > > > self addMorph: otherMorph > > > fullFrame: (LayoutFrame > > > fractions: (0@0 corner: 1@1) > > > offsets: (10@10 corner: -10@-10)) > > > > That looks nicer. Still: if I want the otherMorph's size to follow > > its parent size, do I always need a LayoutFrame ? I sort of don't > > understand why TableLayout can live without one and > > ProportionalLayout cannot. > > Because TableLayout figures out the layout frames on its own. One > (TableLayout) is automatic, ProportionalLayout is manual. > > > BTW: What's the difference between fullFrame: and layoutFrame: > > #addMorph:fullFrame: takes a Morph and a LayoutFrame and is a message > to the parent; > > #layoutFrame: tells the child what its layout frame is. > Martin, A suggestion: perhaps you might your example (with some elaboration) to the examples page on http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/2141 How to lay out submorphs I think many people would be interested having this documented. On the same page is a link to an active essay by Andreas Raab of which you are probably already aware of. Regards Hannes

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Re: BDF fonts
by Hannes Hirzel 28 Apr '02

28 Apr '02

Ross Boylan <RossBoylan(a)stanfordalumni.org> wrote: > I noticed a reference to BDF fonts among the recent posts. > What does BDF stand for? What are they? > > More generally, what is the current and future status of fonts in > squeak? http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/696 has some info, but it > doesn't mention BDF, and the reference to "high quality fonts" says > it's for the 2.7 image. A search for 'BDF' on minnow reveals http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1110 BDF Fonts For Squeak There is BDFFontReader class in Squeak. Somebody might check the page and the status of the most recent 3.2 gamma and update the page accordingly. Regards Hannes

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Re: [Q][morphic] LayoutPolicy and LayoutFrame
by Martin Drautzburg 27 Apr '02

27 Apr '02

Ned Konz <ned(a)bike-nomad.com> writes: > You can just turn on TableLayout and set the layoutInset > > self layoutPolicy: TableLayout new. > self addMorph: otherMorph. > self layoutInset: 10@10. > self layoutChanged. This does not resize the otherMorph. TableLayout just does not do this, right ? > self addMorph: otherMorph > fullFrame: (LayoutFrame > fractions: (0@0 corner: 1@1) > offsets: (10@10 corner: -10@-10)) That looks nicer. Still: if I want the otherMorph's size to follow its parent size, do I always need a LayoutFrame ? I sort of don't understand why TableLayout can live without one and ProportionalLayout cannot. BTW: What's the difference between fullFrame: and layoutFrame:

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Re: [ANN] Dynapad R0.01
by danielv＠netvision.net.il 27 Apr '02

27 Apr '02

Really cool! About a good notes application - a nice SWiki browser would probably be very simple (only needs to deal with the Swiki used subset of HTML), and a Swiki is a great place to order thoughts. Also trivially amenable to later web publication, and automatically saves to outside the image... This is what I do - except on the desktop I don't need a special browser, I can afford to waste the screen space and use Mozilla. Daniel Aaron J Reichow <reic0024(a)d.umn.edu> wrote: > Hello! > > I finally got around to taking some rather unexciting screenshots of my > current iPAQ/Squeak setup. It never ceases to amaze me how little work it > takes to put something together in Squeak. > > http://www.swiki.net/~revaaron/dynapad/7 > > Some of you may notice that the Dynapad Wiki is at a new location: > http://www.swiki.net/~revaaron/dynapad/ > > I've put the image I'm using, along with some release notes: > http://www.swiki.net/~revaaron/dynapad/8 > > But be warned, this image is quite messy. A lot of things will likely > change in the coming months, hopefully for the better. I have done very > little excplicit design or thought about the interface and layout of this > release- I think of it as my image to bootstrap the rest of the Dynapad > work. > > Please, everyone, let me know what you think on the list, via private > email, and on the Ideas and Requests wiki page. > > Regards, > Aaron > > Aaron Reichow :: UMD ACM Pres :: http://www.d.umn.edu/~reic0024/ > "the end of the human race will be that it will eventually > die of civilization. " :: r. w. emerson

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[ENH] ProportionalLayoutMenuEnh-nk
by Ned Konz 27 Apr '02

27 Apr '02

from preamble: "Change Set: PropLayoutMenuEnh-nk Date: 27 April 2002 Author: Ned Konz The Morph menu 'layout/proportional layout' choice does not have a very useful effect, as it doesn't create any observable layout change. This change set makes the choice actually add relative layout frames to the submorphs so that a simple proportional layout can be done from the menu alone. When you choose 'no layout' these frames are removed from the submorphs. "!

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