Squeak-dev April 2003

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171 participants
517 discussions

Re: Well factored Objects
by Richard A. O'Keefe 30 Apr '03

30 Apr '03

Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin(a)texoma.net> wrote about converting a data base to Smalltalk. I was _just_ able to keep my oar out until I spotted this: >>JHPersonName (first, middle, last, maiden, suffix) JHPersonName probably should be JHPersonID and have 'first middle last maiden suffix ssn' instance variables. ssn is the US Social Security Number our government ID number for citizens. First off, no, that's NOT what an SSN is. It is perfectly possible for a US citizen not to have an SSN. It is also possible for a US citizen to have more than one SSN, or so I am credibly informed. And of course it is possible for non-US-citizens to have US SSNs. The SSN is basically the same as our TFN (Tax File Number), and the only legitimate reason for holding someone's SSN (or TFN) in a database is if the person and the database owner are involved in reportable taxable transactions. Read the comp.risks archives for more than you want to know about the problems of SSNs. The thing I really want to take issue with is this "first, middle, last, maiden, suffix" stuff. These are REAL examples: * What are you going to do about people who only have one name? * What are you going to do about people who have exactly two names? * What are you going to do about people who have more than one name, but they don't fall into the pattern of "first" and "last"? * What are you going to do about people who have two names (person, family) in their own language but use a third name in an Anglophone country (e.g. "Ling (Charlie) Wong")? * Do "first" and "last" really mean "written first" and "written last" or are they code-words for "personal" and "family" name? Is there an expectation that names should be sorted with "last" name as most significant? In that case, what about Chinese and Hungarian names? * What about people with more than three names? (Like my father, John AEneas Byron O'Keefe, commonly known as Byron.) * In general, what about people who have three names, but don't go by their first name. (Like my sister-in-law Andrea Fiona Ferris, known as Fiona.) * What about people with compound surnames, like (Cornelius) () (van der Vecker)? (This one has no middle initial.) * What about people whose names have an honorific in the middle? For example, an Irish speaker told me that my name would be written, in Irish, as "richard ursul o caiv" where the "ursul" bit means, IIRC, "young knight" and functions like "Mr". * When it comes to suffix, which rules are to be used? According to Miss Manners (Judith something-or-other; I have several of her books but haven't unpacked them since the last move) the correct rule is that when the oldest bearer of the name dies, everyone remaining moves up one, so that if for example all your family are dead, you have no suffix, no matter how many of your ancestors had the same name. How is the data base to be informed of this? Or will the data base use the rule Miss Manners says is incorrect, and everyone will keep their suffix unchanged? (I'm assuming that the suffix is "Jn", "Sen", "3rd" and so on.) * What about honorifics that go at the end of a name? (Like my uncle, J. Edward O'Keeffe, Esq. Yes, he used two "f"s, my father used one. My grandmother could never make up her mind which to use...) It's in the "suffix" position, so is "Esq(uire)" a suffix? (He's another example of someone going by a middle name, not a first name.) * What about people who have married more than once? A Californian friend of a friend of my dad's had no fewer than three legal names at the same time. * What people want you to call them is not necessarily how they want to identify themselves to you. Mrs John Wilkes, as she wants you to call her (see Miss Manners for why it's "John", not "Mary") may want to offer her passport, which still reads "Mary Robinson", for identification. (After my marriage, my wife wished to be known as Mrs Jeanene O'Keefe, but her passport said Jeanene Ferris; so this is a very real example to me.) * What about people who change their names? (For example, William Thompson gets a bit political about his Polynesian ancestry and changes his name to Wiremu Tamehana. Or, thinking back to "Switched-on Bach", Walter Carlos becomes Wendy Carlos.) * What happened to honorifics, anyway? If someone tells you he is Professor Dr Sir Karl Elias, he probably doesn't want you to ignore most of it. * From a relational point of view, it doesn't make sense to put SSN with name. Someone can change their name without changing their SSN. Someone can change their SSN without changing their name. The number of names someone has and the number of SSNs someone has are not related. I've sweated over this one for years. I have been extremely annoyed at data bases that insisted on getting it wrong (like the people who send me mail addressed to RA Okeefe--I am not now and never have been a sun god). There are complex solutions. But there's also a simple solution. (1) A name is a pair of strings. One of them is a sort key, and the other is for display. It may suffice to use a bracket convention: "[Wong] Sie Lin" vs "J Strother [Moore]" -vs- "{Professor Dr Sir} Karl [Elias]" -vs- "K. Edward [O'Keefe] {Esq}". For sorting, take the bracketed part as primary key, everything without the braced part as secondary key, and the whole thing as tertiary key. For display, delete the brackets and braces. (2) People don't have names. Instead there is a *relation* between people and names. (See William Kent's "Data and Reality".) (3) Any of a person's names should be acceptable in input, but one of the names should be designated as the preferred name for output. This suggests a design fragment like JHPersonName (sortKey, displayText, whenValid) JHPerson (perferredName, otherName*, ssn?, ...) But as someone else has already pointed out, you should approach a design problem like this NOT by saying "what structure can I perceive in the small range of name types I am familiar with" but "what do I actually need to DO with names?" (Similar observations apply to addresses. I am fed up with Web forms that won't let me submit them until I have filled in a state. My country only has 4 million people. We _haven't_ any states. Don't divide an address into standardised USA parts unless you really have to.)

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[ENH][Refactoring] InstructionPrinter ([approved] dvf
by Daniel Vainsencher 30 Apr '03

30 Apr '03

I see. In the previous state, each of two classes held a meaningless subset of the variable references... Yuck. This changeset cleans up plenty of cruft. Daniel Marcus <marcus(a)ira.uka.de> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 12:00:13PM +0200, Daniel Vainsencher wrote: > > I'm reviewing this now for approval. > > > > I didn't understand the use of the new variable "bingo" which seems to > > be initialized, returned, but never updated? > > > > Can either of you explain it? > > > This variable was pushed down from AbtractIntructionPrinter, together > with the Method that returns it: > > interpretNextInstructionUsing: aScanner > > bingo _ false. > aScanner interpretNextInstructionFor: self. > ^bingo > > > So this simply interprets all bytecodes, sets bingo to "true" > when seeing an IntVar reference, e.g. > > pushReceiverVariable: offset > > bingo _ true > > (this method in not in the changeset, it's allready there) > > Marcus

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Re: [ENH][Refactoring] InstructionPrinter ([er][et][su][sm][cd] bysd it improves the InstructionPrinter hierarchy and remove duplicated logic)
by Daniel Vainsencher 30 Apr '03

30 Apr '03

I'm reviewing this now for approval. I didn't understand the use of the new variable "bingo" which seems to be initialized, returned, but never updated? Can either of you explain it? Daniel Stephane Ducasse <ducasse(a)iam.unibe.ch> wrote: > I agree. I reviewed this refactoring and indeed we should push the > cleaning of Squeak. > > Stef > > > On Tuesday, April 29, 2003, at 10:17 AM, Marcus wrote: > > > Hi! > > > > What is supposed to happen now? Will this be added to the > > update-stream? > > If yes, why not yet? If no, why not? (THIS REFACTORING HAS EVEN > > SUNIT-TESTS) > > > > We *really* need better turnaround times for small refactorings... > > > > Marcus > > > > > > On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 02:32:13PM +0200, Stephane Ducasse wrote: > >> > >> On Tuesday, April 8, 2003, at 01:20 PM, Marcus Denker wrote: > >> > >>> Change Set: instrPrinter > >>> Date: 8 April 2003 > >>> Author: Marcus Denker > >>> > >>> A refactoring for InstructionPrinter, > >>> AbstractInstructionPrinter and InstVarRefLocator: > >>> > >>> AbstractInstructionPrinter: > >>> > >>> moved the instVar and a method into InstVarRefLocator, now this class > >>> can > >>> be used as a Abstract Superclass for > >>> both InstructionPrinter and InstVarRefLocator > >>> > >>> Renamed to InstructionClient (c.f. VisualWorks). > >>> > >>> InstructionPrinter: refactored to be a > >>> subclass of InstructionClient" > >>> > >>> Tests are provided for the three changed classes, see attached files: > >>> > >>> InstructionClientTest.st.gz > >>> InstructionPrinterTest.st.gz > >>> InstVarRefLocatorTest.st.gz > >>> > >>> -- > >>> Marcus Denker marcus(a)ira.uka.de -- Squeak! http://squeak.de > >>> > >>> <instrPrinter.6.cs.gz><InstVarRefLocatorTest.st.gz><InstructionClient > >>> Te > >>> st.st.gz><InstructionPrinterTest.st.gz> > >>> > >> Prof. Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE > >> http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/ > >> "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do > >> different? ... especially if, > >> by doing something different, today might not be your last day on > >> earth" Calvin&Hobbes > >> > >> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it..." Alan Kay. > >> > >> Open Source Smalltalks: http://www.squeak.org, > >> http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/smalltalk.html > >> Free books for Universities at > >> http://www.esug.org/sponsoring/promotionProgram.html > >> Free Online Book at > >> http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/WebPages/FreeBooks.html > >> > >> > > > > > Prof. Dr. Stéphane DUCASSE > http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/ > "if you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do > different? ... especially if, > by doing something different, today might not be your last day on > earth" Calvin&Hobbes > > "The best way to predict the future is to invent it..." Alan Kay. > > Open Source Smalltalks: http://www.squeak.org, > http://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/smalltalk.html > Free books for Universities at > http://www.esug.org/sponsoring/promotionProgram.html > Free Online Book at > http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/WebPages/FreeBooks.html

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[ANN] Keynote Speeches for ESUG Smalltalk Conference
by Roel Wuyts 30 Apr '03

30 Apr '03

The European Smalltalk User Group (ESUG) is very proud to announce the following keynote speakers for the next ESUG Smalltalk Conference in Bled, Slovenia ( August 25-29, http://esug2003.esug.org/ ): - Lars Bak - John Brant - Vassily Bykov - Dan Ingalls - Joseph Pelrine In addition to the keynote speeches, the program consists of other presentations in the morning and in the beginning of the afternoon. These are followed by 'Talkussions', discussion sessions/workshops about the talks held that day, or on any other topic of interest. With the Talkussions we want to bring the people giving the talk and the people that crave for more detailed information closer together, and foster ad-hoc workshops where the participants define the content. Hence this year's programme promises to be a healthy mix of talks and workshops. We are always soliciting talks about your use of Smalltalk. Prospective speakers must clearly explain the format they would like to use (tutorial, experience report, workshop or demo). Each proposal must include a valid e-mail address and an abstract of around 200 words. All proposals have to be sent to Roel Wuyts (wuyts(a)iam.unibe.ch) AND Stephane Ducasse (ducasse(a)iam.unibe.ch), in plain ASCII pasted in the body of the e-mail (NOT attached). Hot topics include, but are not limited to, - web service applications using Smalltalk - experience using eXtreme Programming - distributed applications - new Smalltalk implementations and optimizations - Smalltalk Development Tools - Language improvements or enhancements Exhibitors or sponsors should directly contact the ESUG board for more information (esug-info(a)esug.org ). -- Roel Wuyts Software Composition Group roel.wuyts(a)iam.unibe.ch University of Bern, Switzerland http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~wuyts/ Board Member of the European Smalltalk User Group: www.esug.org

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Well factored Objects
by Jimmie Houchin 30 Apr '03

30 Apr '03

Hello, I am wanting/trying to move some homebrew software I wrote at work in MSWorks to Squeak. It is a database application. It is a person database with close to 200 fields. Not all fields are an attribute of person, but I am very contrained with MSWorks. Alas, it was all I had available. The JHPerson class could easily have dozens of instance variables. But what I had been thinking is to group common variables into new classes similar to but not necessarily exactly: JHPersonName (first, middle, last, maiden, suffix) JHPersonBirth (date, place) JHPersonDeath (date, place) JHPersonMarriage (list of (dates, places, spouses)) JHPersonAddress (street, city, county, state, zip) JHPersonOccupation (title, industry) JHPersonEducation (numYears, listOfSchools) ... lots more data ... and aggregate something like above into: JHPerson name _ JHPersonName birth _ JhPersonBirth ... Is that a good or proper approach? And would code like the below be good or proper? #JHPerson name name isNil ifFalse: [^name] ifTrue: [name _ FHPersonName new]. with access like: p _ FHPerson new initialize. "initialize initializes name variable." p name first: 'John'. ... Is this reasonably on course, or did I fall off the beam somewhere? Thanks for any wisdom. Jimmie Houchin

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Re: [Q]Where in the image do we stash pictures?
by Tim Olson 30 Apr '03

30 Apr '03

tblanchard(a)mac.com wrote: | By pictures, I mean images loaded from jpg, gif, and png type files so | I can get them again. Check out ImageImports in the Smalltalk SystemDictionary, and the related methods viewImageImports, importImage: ,etc. -- tim

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Squeak VM 3.41 Broken
by Jonathan W. Smith 30 Apr '03

30 Apr '03

Apt-get insists that Squeak VM 3.41 is broken and should be removed. Is this true or retaliation directed at Euro-Disney? And, if I say keep the Squeak, apt-get -s huffy and refuses to install anything else. When I was new to apt-get it deleted another program that it disliked before I knew what was happening. I have yet to be able to re-install a working version on my PC (which means they were right, right?) Merci à l'avance de votre conseil pensif. Les meilleurs souvenirs, STAY CLEAR OF NETGEAR _________________________________________ Jonathan Smith Wonderful Human Being ICQ#: 6343701 ( Home Tel#: (607) 770-0911 + Fax#: (775) 665-3368 + More ways to contact me <http://wwp.icq.com/6343701> _________________________________________

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[BUG] Chasing StarBrowser window "ghost"
by Lic. Edgar J. De Cleene 29 Apr '03

29 Apr '03

Ned, Lex : Here is a new error !! Thanks in advance. 29 April 2003 5:37:51 pm VM: Mac OS - Squeak3.5alpha of '7 January 2003' [latest update: #5169] Squeak VM 3.5.0b3 Image: Squeak3.6alpha [latest update: #5184] UndefinedObject(Object)>>doesNotUnderstand: Receiver: nil Arguments and temporary variables: aMessage: a Message with selector: #paneColor and arguments: #() Receiver's instance variables: nil SubWindow>>paneColor Receiver: a SubWindow(4087) Arguments and temporary variables: Receiver's instance variables: bounds: 35@113 corner: 995@697 owner: nil submorphs: #() fullBounds: nil color: Color transparent extension: a MorphExtension (1209) [eventHandler = an EventHandler; mouseEnterS...etc... borderWidth: 0 borderColor: #inset model: nil slotName: nil open: false labelString: 'Untitled Window' stripes: nil label: nil closeBox: nil collapseBox: nil activeOnlyOnTop: false paneMorphs: #() paneRects: nil collapsedFrame: nil fullFrame: 35@113 corner: 995@697 isCollapsed: false menuBox: nil mustNotClose: false labelWidgetAllowance: nil updatablePanes: #() allowReframeHandles: true labelArea: nil expandBox: nil StarBrowser>>adoptBrowserWindow: Receiver: a StarBrowser Arguments and temporary variables: win: a SystemWindow(82) pane: nil Receiver's instance variables: dependents: #(a SystemWindow(558) a SBHierarchicalListMorph(356)) currentSelection: ClassificationItemWrapper(Change Sets (Additions) (20)) myBrowser: a Browser root: Root (1) rootWrapper: ClassificationItemWrapper(Root (1)) list: a SBHierarchicalListMorph(356) window: a SystemWindow(558) editorWindow: a SubWindow(4087) toolbar: a RectangleMorph(1797) listLayoutFrame: a LayoutFrame selectionButtons: an OrderedCollection() history: an OrderedCollection(Root (1)) currentHistory: 1 ItemEditor>>adoptBrowserWindow: Receiver: an ItemEditor Arguments and temporary variables: win: a SystemWindow(82) Receiver's instance variables: starBrowser: a StarBrowser

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RE: [ANN] [ENH] FillInTheBlankMorph Look
by Norton, Chris 29 Apr '03

29 Apr '03

That looks nice Diego. Thanks. I haven't got the time to look over the protocol for this morph (I'm at work), but it seems to me that it would be nice if this dialog class had some customizable options for instantiation. For example, most windoze dialogs use the OK / Cancel protocol for the button text. Perhaps the button text could be an optional parameter, along the descriptive text, of course. It might also be useful to have an optional button (or buttons) that can be added to the dialog. A help button, for example, would be useful in some circumstances (OK Cancel Help is very common). Keep up the good work! :-) Cheers, ---==> Chris

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Re: [fix] Problem with ByteArray and FFI??
by Chris Muller 29 Apr '03

29 Apr '03

Avi Bryant wrote: There is a separate "platform independent" category that does not require FFI, and that lets you explicitly choose whether you want little or big endian. This is what you should use for network protocols or serialization. The methods are, eg, #longAt:bigEndian: #longAt:put:bigEndian: #shortAt:bigEndian: ===== Ah, these ARE the ones I'm using. Magma doesn't use anything in the "external access" category. Michael, I'm not sure why you had a primitive failure. Thanks for re-clarifying this for everyone, Avi. - Chris __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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