Squeak-dev April 2002

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195 participants
665 discussions

RE: Apple hyping java...
by David Chase 02 Apr '02

02 Apr '02

At 03:09 PM 3/30/2002 -0500, Bijan Parsia wrote: >Learning how to explore Squeak from the app into the code is a key >"aha" moment, in my experience. Obviously, you haven't gotten there >yet. It might be interesting to know what books/articles/whatever you used >so we can rectify them a bit. Didn't use any. Just picked it up, and started poking at it. Couldn't quite figure out where the source code was. I thought the flapping windows were a little weird -- if nothing else, it gives the idea that you can't really tell what you might or might not be able to do, until you actually poke it with the mouse. This meant, when looking for source code, that I was never really sure if I had looked properly (I am working from recollection here, it was some months ago). Eventually, I have better things to do. I will try again. (Much time passes.) Okay -- there is a bit of a theme to all the problems, and that is that the system is too tuned to expert use. Just for example, the tool tips take .8 second to appear. Why should a beginner be forced to wait to see these? So, I have a quest, which is to find that delay, and reduce it. There's insufficient cues. Over in the tools thing (that pulls out of the right border) there's no clear cue that what you are supposed to do is click AND DRAG. I ended up with some large number of funny yellow dots over there in the flaps, they must mean something, I can't make them do anything. And the world menu, why does it need a special "dismiss this menu" selection, instead of a little X in the upper left corner to make it go away? What's going on here? Why this inconsistency? There must be a reason, but it seems really ridiculous to have "dismiss this menu" spelled out as a choice. (And no, I don't think it would improve things much if you explained it to me. It would seem just as ridiculous to the next person who had not heard the explanation.) It's difficult to "find" things. I eventually decided that what I needed to do was find some message senders (for some message related to balloons, can't recall what). Is it "find"? Nope. Eventually, on a lark, I happened to right-click over in the unlabelled list that *happens to contain* what appear to be message names, and I discover the "senders of ..." choice. Now, I suppose, if I were playing Adventure, I would say "aha", but otherwise I'm just turning over rocks looking for pretty minimal treasure. So, after much looking, I find the method that contains the time for delay before display the help balloons, and change it to 100 ms. Now I'm ready to save my change. (Digression: A much less diplomatic rant was deleted, and I decided to substitute something more useful and perhaps productive. So, here I am, trying to replay my actions, and I CANNOT FIND the code that I found once already. That's not good.) So, I'm ready to save my change. That's save, spelled, apparently, a-c-c-e-p-t. At least, I hope that was right -- it asked me for my initials, and I wonder, in hindsight, if there was some sort of a try-it-out-before-committing button that I should have hit first (I mean, who knows, maybe I failed to turn over the UI rocks in the proper order?) This all seems a little terse, and it seems like a gratuitous change of jargon. Why not call all the finding things "find", and all the saving things "save"? Why not label the columns of stuff so I can know for sure what they contain? But now, with my faster help tips, I went poking through the music player, and selected something ("ratio") under the something menu on the waveform (light green) window, got a zero divide (why?) dismissed the exception notice, and now the waveform window is blank and useless. I wish I knew how to reset/restart it. Oh Well. Maybe the exception window went somewhere, and I should go looking for it. Nope, can't seem to find it. The learning curve here is really unpleasant. I can compare this with a couple of different things I've picked up in recent months. One was DrScheme, from Rice. I already knew Scheme, sure, but I didn't know the IDE (and I have the red, blue, and green Smalltalk 80 books to browse for Smalltalk examples, so I'm not completely without documentation). DrScheme had an example graphics thing I could cut from the doc, paste, play with. It was even a little bit buggy, so they could illustrate how to do something better (also in the doc). There's a "scripting" window in Squeak, but it doesn't appear to be what I wanted, since I cannot type in it, move it, close it, or change its size. Datapoint #2 is the Eclipse IDE for Java. It took me a while to figure out what was what, but I made some progress from the very start, and soon enough I knew enough to see that I would not have to take anyone else's word that it would eventually be worth my while to learn it. And yes, I am aware that Eclipse has Smalltalk roots, and I wonder if this turning-over-rocks sort of user interface is part of the Smalltalk style, because I have similar gripes about it. At one point, after using it for some days, it still took me *minutes* to find the proper button to push to get what I wanted. Please understand (and I can see how it would fit your model of the world not to believe this) I am actually trying to figure this out, and I am actually quite good at figuring things out. I've fixed Other People's Bugs in everything from Gosling Emacs, to device drivers in the LSI-11 FuzzBall OS, to a DVI-to-PDF converter in MikTeX, to David Gay's floating point-to-string conversion code. If it's not easy for me, you've got a problem. This feels like an Adventure Game, not a user interface. >I know, but I don't see why not. Squeak is great for writing a wide >variety of compliers. You've not done it, I take it. I've written a number of compilers, looked at many more. I've written a fair amount of code in Lisp and BCPL, and had quite good luck with some untyped C code that I wrote long ago (all roads lead to void *). I spent a good long time playing with functional languages (wrote an FP84 interpreter in BCPL, even). I'm not stupid, I'm not inexperienced. The compilers I was thinking of, and I should have made myself clear, seem to take at least 8 person-years to complete, and are commensurately large. It would be a tremendous win to write one of these in less time, but it would also be an expensive experiment. I don't know if they are large because they must be large, or if they are large because the use of a stupid language makes them large, or if static checking makes it possible for them to become large. Again, an expensive experiment to determine what's really going on, and I'm not really interested in ridiculous dogmatic answers from people who haven't even done it in the "wrong" language. You probably think I'm a neanderthal for using sucky Java, but most places I know of that are writing compilers, are using C or C++ -- they're not even using language with garbage collection. (Gcc, astoundingly, is written in K&R C.) They are not even willing to risk that minimal a change. What I don't see is what your purpose in arguing with me like this is. My suggestion/request, if you wish to do something about the adoption of Java where you think Squeak would do better, is to show off Squeak where it works well, and is clearly better than Java. If you wish to argue that Squeak is truly better even for writing compilers, you can say that, but as a compiler-and-other-things writer, I see Java's limits most clearly when working on things that are not compilers. I think you are making the job of promoting Squeak (to, for instance, Apple) unnecessarily hard if you insist on trying to show it off where Java does not most clearly suck. Swing's a pig -- it ought to be easy to make it look bad. Furthermore, nobody has ever said "wow!" about a compiler demo. David Chase

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Ex-Lurker Resigns.
by Sean Charles 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

Hello, I have finally decided to stop being a lurker and join the list after close on five years of Squeaking! Don't ask me why now 'cos I just don't know. I have recently uploaded a new web site and half a dozen or so goodies including: DVDMorph - watch movies whilst Squeaking. (WinDVD only?) PalmOS font as StrikeFont2, oven ready! A multimedia hangman type game. Main page: http://www.obvious.nildram.co.uk/ Squeak trail: http://www.obvious.nildram.co.uk/stinformation.html I am up to answering questions on everything and anything related to hacking Squeak in general. I hope this proves to be as interseting as it has been to read over the years! Sean Charles.

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No Background?
by Malachi Clark 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

Hello all, I am new to squeak, so pardon me if this seems like a stupid question. I am trying to find out if it is possible to remove the world background (at least visually). Essentially, I am trying to see if it is possible in a 'bulletproofed' stand-alone application, to remove the background (and disable programming, thru 'bulletproofing'), and at the same time leave a morph (and its submorphs) visible, and able to be interacted with. Obviously, the functions of the main background, like for example, the "X" in the upper right hand corner of the windows version, would have to be replicated in the morph. I assume that is the easy part, but I could be wrong. If that assumption is wrong, please let me know. Is there any way to do this? Thank you in advance for any help you can provide. Malachi

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[BUG][VM][Unix][3.2gamma][SF][VMMaker] event handling broken
by Stephan Rudlof 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

Generating a recent Linux 3.2gamma VM with VMMaker-3-2-version5.5.cs ConsolidateTo4744-JMM.4.cs 3.2-4743 #1 [oss audio, xshm] Tue Mar 5 17:50:35 CET 2002 gcc 2.95.4 actual SF sources gives a bad event handling: mouse button presses only work after *moving* the mouse thereafter! If you click e.g. a collapse button it becomes darker, but the window collapses just after moving the mouse then. This is new compared with older VMs. Greetings, Stephan -- Stephan Rudlof (sr(a)evolgo.de) "Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, 'Today I will be brilliant.'" -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3

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RE: MVC experts, can you help?
by john-reed.x.maffeo＠mail.sprint.com 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

Mayuresh, You can try me. Best Regards, > -----Original Message----- > From: mayuresh [mailto:mayuresh@vsnl.com] > Sent: Saturday, March 30, 2002 12:51 PM > To: squeak-dev > Cc: mayuresh > Subject: MVC experts, can you help? > > > Hi, > > Are there any people around here with decent enough command > over MVC to > answer a couple of questions? > > ~Mayuresh > > >

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[mailing list] lost messages, squeakfoundation gone
by Martin Drautzburg 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

I occasionally notice that my postings get lost. This may or may not coincide with situations where http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/ is dead and squeakfoundation disappears from DNS. What do you think ? nslookup basically works: > sunsite.unc.edu Server: data.addcom.de Address: 62.96.128.66 Non-authoritative answer: Name: helios.metalab.unc.edu Address: 152.2.210.81 Aliases: sunsite.unc.edu Can also find org: > org Server: data.addcom.de Address: 62.96.128.66 Name: org but not squakfoundation.org: > squeakfoundation.org Server: data.addcom.de Address: 62.96.128.66 *** data.addcom.de can't find squeakfoundation.org: No response from server Trying another nameserver > squeakfoundation.org Server: ns.surfeu.de Address: 212.197.144.34 *** ns.surfeu.de can't find squeakfoundation.org: No response from server

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Squeak for everyday use??
by Mayuresh Kathe 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

Hi, Lets suppose, I want to use Squeak on a regular basis for the following tasks, how could I possibly go around achieving my goals? 1. Web surfing (not too heavy, mostly googling around) 2. EMails (lots of them, filtering, PGP would be great ;) [handling around 300 mails a day] 3. Telnet (thats one of the most important things in my life :) [is there SSH available too??] <grin> 4. Document preparation (usually LaTeX, would like some way to view .ps files) 5. Journal keeping (pure text, almost 8 years of data, need some encryption technique, certainly wouldn't want my to-be wife to read _some_ of those entries ;) 6. A bit of music (mostly MP3) 7. A bit of drawing (mostly rough concept drawings done while on the move) 8. PIM (Schedules, AddressBook) ~Mayuresh

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RE: Apple hyping java...
by David Chase 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

At 04:12 PM 3/29/2002 -0600, Aaron J Reichow wrote: >> Oh yeah, Java SUCKS. >Too true! Guys, It doesn't suck enough to make a difference, and too many times people have declared that "thus-and-such-sucks" for that simple assertion to convince anyone. Remember, people aren't comparing Java to Squeak (or ML, or Haskell) -- they're comparing it to C++. In that comparison, Java looks pretty good. If you want to convince someone, you have got to put a little more work into your argument, and think a bit about your audience. Just for example -- I wouldn't write a compiler in Squeak. I might write a game, or a web server, or a graphical app, in Squeak. From what I see of the discussions of threads and security on this list, I am not at all sure that I would use Squeak in a context where I really needed lots of threads running well, or someplace where I had to worry about someone finding a way in through some hole; the discussions have just not been very confidence-inspiring. That's just my advice, worth at least what you paid for it. I downloaded Squeak once and played with it, and thought it was very interesting, but could never figure out where to begin. I don't have enough free time for this sort of unguided adventure, and I don't think I differ much from most people (except that I probably pick up languages faster than your average bear, and I actually think it would be good for me to learn Squeak). So, to get to the point, you should either quit whinging about how much Java sucks and how misguided Apple is, or you should do something about it. And YOU should do something about it; I also want to become more proficient in ML and Haskell, and I will pursue whichever learning curve is gentlest. yours, grumpily, David Chase (who usually just reads this list)

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[updates] 14 for Squeak 3.3alpha
by Dan Ingalls 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

Folks - for some reason this never made it to the list last Wednesday... ------------------------------------ >Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:26:29 -0800 >To: SqueakDev >From: Dan Ingalls <Dan(a)SqueakLand.org> >Subject: [updates] 14 for Squeak 3.3alpha >Cc: >Bcc: >X-Attachments: > >Here are the summaries for the 14. > >Methinks it may be time for some harvesting fairly soon. > > - Dan >---------------------- >4800gZipContents-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 12 March 2002 >* Makes the window into which a gZipped file's decompressed contents are projected be a Workspace rather than a plain StringHolder, so that its window-menu will offer 'save contents to a file...', which is frequently useful here. >* Do not automatically append '.text' to the specified filename when a workspace's contents are saved to a file -- instead, *suggest* a .text suffix (and not even that, in the case of a gZipped file being viewed decompressed,) but don't insist on it." > >4801jumpHierarch-jla -- Jerry L. Archibald -- May 28, 2001 >Modifies the 'jump to project' menu such that the primary project-list is ordered as a tree that reflects the hierarchical structure of the set of projects. >Jerry Archibald (1940-2001) died in June 2001, and this code was his final contribution to Squeak. Published, with minimal modification, by sw, 3/12/2002" > >4802Ev-Essay-fix > >4803MakeActorFix-ar -- Andreas Raab -- 14 March 2002 >Fixes a problem reading MDL files." > >4804classRefs-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 17 March 2002 >Cleans up the problem that references-to-symbol queries were putting up an inappropriate informer on any symbol that was both a submodule-name and a class name -- e.g. Browser, Debugger, FileList" > >4805alignSelection-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 20 March 2002 >Adds six alignment commands to SelectionMorph's halo manu, allowing groups of morphs to be statically aligned (relative to each other) in various ways." > >4806fastFrame-bmk -- Brian Keefer -- 22 March 2002 >When fastDragWindowForMorphic is in effect, makes window dragging start relative to where you first clicked, not wherever the mouse jerked to while the SystemWindow was waiting to see if this drag was merely a sloppy click." > >4807HTMLTable-tk -- Ted Kaehler -- 22 March 2002 >After you parse an incoming web pabe, class HTMLTable is able to deliver its data to you in an Array2D. Very handy. >When grubbing around in web pages, the match: method is very handy. (strm match: 'foo'), advances the stream to just after then next 'foo', and returns true if is found one. > Now added backUpTo:, for going backwards." > >4808colorScrollBars-dew -- Doug Way -- 23 March 2002 >- Changes the alternativeScrollbarLook so that the inboard scrollbar has the flat, non-rounded look of the original scrollbar, but it matches the window color. (The flop-out scrollbar is still rounded, since the rounded look looks better with the rounded arrows, and the sharper highlighting makes more sense when only one scrollbar appears on the screen at one time.) >- Removes border around this new inboard scrollbar, which looks cleaner, and also saves space. >- Improves the Color>>lighter/darker family to work consistently for lighter and darker shades of color. Basically, #lighter and #darker will now adjust by the same amount, no matter what shade you start from (similar to what #dansDarker attempted). This makes the #raised/inset bevelling of buttons/etc look a lot better. Also tweaks a few users of these methods in the system to adjust for the change. Mostly everything looks fine as is. (The new methods are actually about 10% slower than the old ones on micro benchmarks, but this doesn't seem to be enough to be noticeable in macro benchmarks or in normal use.) >- Fixes keyboard focus highlighting so that the rectangle isn't hidden behind inboard scrollbars. (cleaned up ScrollPane>>innerBounds) >- Permanently hides scrollbars in a few short panes, since they're not needed, and look ugly when inboard. These panes include the top pane of a hierarchy/filecontents browser, the pattern pane of the filelist, and the top pane of the methodfinder. >- Makes the scrollbars fit correctly within the panes, without overlapping borders (when inboard). >- Increases lightening and darkening of window titlebars when active/inactive, so the difference is more noticeable. >- Moves alternativeWindowLook preference to windows category (instead of browsing), since it is window-related. >- Fixes alternativeScrollbarLook scrollbar so that the thumb doesn't darken after you drag it the first time. >- Includes a small fix since the March 14 version, so that translucent/transparent colors are handled correctly. > >4809recentChangesColor-dew -- Doug Way -- 24 March 2002 >A tweak to correct the multi-selection color in the Recent Changes window, which was trying to darker a transparent color, and was affected by the Color changes." > >4810slideToTrash-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 25 March 2002 >Applies only when the #preserveTrash preference is true: >When dismissing by halo, slide the object being dismissed to the trash-can. If no trash can is visible on the screen, put one there first. >This update also fixes the problem that when haloTransitions and preserveTrash were both true and you dismissed a morph via halo, a spurious momentary fading halo would appear *in the wrong place* at the topleft of the screen." > >4811classListScroll-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 25 March 2002 >Addresses two long-standing bugs, both relating to whether the selected class is properly scrolled into view in a browser or Hierarchy Browser freshly launched by some browser-requesting or hierarchy-requesting command. >* One was an off-by-one bug affecting the browse-it and browse-full commands, when the first class just *below* the last one visible in the unscrolled class-list-pane would not properly get scrolled into view. >* The other is worked around rather than fixed; it relates to hierarchy-browsers launched by browse-hierarchy or by browse-it when #alternativeBrowseIt preference is true. >The workaround is to force the list selections to be made a second time, after launch; this takes extra time but results in selections being visible. >* Also (unrelated) fixed here is a bug wherein the hitting of the Enter key into a morphic PluggableTextMorph that was visible in an mvc project could generate an error." > >4812projSemiFix-hg -- Henrik Gedenryd -- 24 March 2002 >This makes Project windows closable but simply comments out a chunk of Environments-related code that I translated into something equivalent for modules, but really couldn't make sense of." > >4813ZipCheckNot-di -- Dan Ingalls -- 27 March 2002 >Defeated the content-based Zip Archive test in ArchiveViewer because it caused an error when using the FileList to view a remote server. The problem was because of a bug that can probably be repaired (looking for the remote fileName on the local disk), but I couldn't take the time to fix it so I simply disabled it for now."

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[updates] 40 for Squeak 3.2gamma
by Dan Ingalls 01 Apr '02

01 Apr '02

Folks - for some reason this never made it to the list last Wednesday... ------------------------------------ >Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 22:44:52 -0800 >To: SqueakDev >From: Dan Ingalls <Dan(a)SqueakLand.org> >Subject: [updates] 40 for Squeak 3.2gamma >Cc: >Bcc: >X-Attachments: > >This spate represents a tasteful selection, mostly by Scott Wallace and Doug Way, of 3.3 updates that are compatible with, and should be included in the 3.2 update stream. those of you who are testing or using 3.2 will want to check these out. > >Enjoy > - Dan > >The summaries having been already distributed for 3.3, here is a mere list of the updates included... >----------------------------- >4744AcceptModuleClassDefs-di -- Dan Ingalls -- 6 March 2002 >4745scrollbarBtn-dew -- Doug Way -- 5 February 2002 >4746undoRecords-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 5 February 2002 >4747various-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 5 February 2002 >4748dontComeToFront-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 6 February 2002 >4749designations-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 5 February 2002 >4750FixPropLayout -- Andreas Raab -- 6 February 2002 >4751FixTranslucentStrings-ar -- Andreas Raab -- 6 February 2002 >4752FixPolyBounds-ar -- Andreas Raab -- 6 February 2002 >4754limitClass-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 6 February 2002 >4755menuButtonDrop-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 7 February 2002 >4759FlashDupFix-ar -- Andreas Raab -- 11 February 2002 >4760jMovieFrameSorting-jm -- John Maloney -- 11 February 2002 >4761FancyNumFix-tk -- Ted Kaehler -- 15 February 2002 >4762fileContBrFix-sumim -- Masato Sumi -- 17 February 2002 >4767exportJPG-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 20 February 2002 >4769tileFixes-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 20 February 2002 >4778windowColors-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 26 February 2002 >4779cleanups-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 27 February 2002 >4781projLoadPatches-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 27 February 2002 >4784padSignature-raa -- Bob Arning -- 2 March 2002 >4785fixProcessDebug-nk -- Ned Konz -- 13 February 2002 >4786fixMatrixTfm-mas -- Mark Schwenk -- 19 February 2002 >4787logSaveAs-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 4 March 2002 >4788rectangleFixes-jb -- Jim Benson -- 24 February 2002 >4789scrollBarAgain-dew -- Doug Way -- 3 March 2002 >4790FontFileIn-tk -- Ted Kaehler -- 5 March 2002 >4791prefSym-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 5 March 2002 >4792rowCol-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 5 March 2002 >4799postRetro-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 7 March 2002 >4801jumpHierarch-jla -- Jerry L. Archibald -- May 28, 2001 >4802Ev-Essay-fix >4803MakeActorFix-ar -- Andreas Raab -- 14 March 2002 >4805alignSelection-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 20 March 2002 >4806fastFrame-bmk -- Brian Keefer -- 22 March 2002 >4807HTMLTable-tk -- Ted Kaehler -- 22 March 2002 >4808colorScrollBars-dew -- Doug Way -- 23 March 2002 >4809recentChangesColor-dew -- Doug Way -- 24 March 2002 >4810slideToTrash-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 25 March 2002 >4811classListScroll-sw -- Scott Wallace -- 25 March 2002

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