Squeak-dev May 2007

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150 participants
233 discussions

Re: Dynabook hw cost
by Alan Kay 25 May '07

25 May '07

Hi Ralph -- I don't think either Ungar's architecture or the criticism of it below address the most important issues of making VHL object-oriented computer hardware (both then and now). Cheers, Alan At 08:05 AM 5/24/2007, Ralph Johnson wrote: >Here is what Dave Ungar says he did on the project (among other >things): http://www.linkedin.com/in/davidungar > >His thesis is online >at ftp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/pub/techreps/CSD-86-287.html > >It also got turned into a book: >http://www.amazon.com/Evaluation-Performance-Smalltalk-Distinguished-Disser… > >Here is some criticism of his results: >http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/txt/garbage… > >I like his thesis very much, but there is certainly room to argue with >the conclusions, if for nothing else than that the world has changed >in the last 20 years. > >-Ralph

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Squeak Plugin on I.E 6
by mstram 25 May '07

25 May '07

Greetings, I'm trying to run the SqueakPluginInstaller on I.E6, well actually I'm trying to load any .pr files, but everytime I try to load a .pr file, I.E6 just tries to re-install the plugin. I'm guessing that whatever I.E. uses to determine if a plugin is installed is not returning the correct info. The plugin does get installed "successfully", well there are no error messages anyway. This is on Win XP pro. Any ideas? Mike -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Squeak-Plugin--on-I.E-6-tf3813964.html#a10796428 Sent from the Squeak - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Dynabook hw cost
by Daniel Lanovaz 25 May '07

25 May '07

>Oddly enough none of the sparc tag stuff turned out to help us with >that particular code generator; and the register windows stuff caused >so much hassle I think it was ignored as much as possible. Peter (L. Peter Deutsch) created two versions of the PPS translator for SPARC: one with and one without the use of register windows. The register window version was the default in the shipping product (using the save/restore call-return instructions). The call delay slot was typically always utilized. I was forced to use register windows in PPS's native language and callback interfaces because that was the default compiler setting on Sun platforms at the time. We did not use SPARC's tagged instructions, as we tagged in the low-order two bits, aligning all objects on a four byte boundary, thus freeing the two bits. Daniel

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Monticello and overwriting a selector temporary
by Norbert Hartl 24 May '07

24 May '07

Hi, sometimes I need to change some code of squeak or of a module I'm using. Monticello is great for doing this. By just labelling the method category to *mymodule. But then if the change gets obsoleted (other strategy, module is fixed) I remove the method category. This leads to the method being lost. Monticello recognizes that the method has been removed since the last version and removes it. Is there a best practice to do this without being this harmful? This is very annoying if you are developing with other people which easily can oversee the removal. Norbert

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Button tracking Morph
by subbukk 24 May '07

24 May '07

Hi, Is there a way to get notified (not polling) when any mouse button/modifier key goes up/down? I was trying to put together a Morph (like the Mouse button indicator in the Orange Book) that tracks up/down status of mouse buttons and modifier keys in real time. I got stuck because all existing usage of Sensor is based on polling while I would rather get notified on changes. I tried stepping the following code every 175 ms: self color: Color lightGray. #(red yellow blue) do: [ :c | (Sensor perform: (c , 'Pressed') asSymbol) ifTrue: [ self color: (Color perform: c) ] ]. There must be better way, TIA .. Subbu

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[ENH] Method and traits
by Bergel, Alexandre 24 May '07

24 May '07

Hi! This email contains a new OB command. Select a method issues from a trait composition (e.g., Behavior>>decompile:), press Apple-t, and you browse the trait. Cheers, Alexandre -- _,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;: Alexandre Bergel http://www.bergel.eu ^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.

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Re: Dynabook hw cost
by Mike O'Brien 24 May '07

24 May '07

On Tue, May 22, 2007 at 03:29:52PM -0700, Brad Fuller wrote: > Along those lines, is there any contemporary non-Von Neuman processor > architecture that would be better suited for Smalltalk? Perhaps to reduce > power and to streamline OO architectures. I remember reading Dan and Alan > mentioning the handy use of microcoding processors at Xerox to help their > work. I also recall a processor that was built for OO but I can't find my > notes. Anyone? Then Matthew Fulmer wrote: > Jecel is the local expert in processors. You should check out > his site: > http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware > > He and I will probably be working collaboratively on > implementing one of those designs (we are both starting a > Master's degree at the same time, and we are planning to work > together on the same project) This is anecdotal (I wasn't involved), and because I wasn't involved, my memory is doubly foggy, BUT: Dave Patterson at Berkeley ran a project for several years called SOAR: Smalltalk On A RISC. For openers, he ported Smalltalk to the VAX under Berkeley UNIX by writing his own VM out of the Blue Book and running a Xerox image on it. He did this in order to instrument the VM so he could figure out how to help it along in hardware. Then he ported it to Suns when they came along, using SunView. I was working at Rand and we had a Smalltalk license, so I grabbed the code and put it up on an early Sun. Doing so taught me a valuable lesson on the dangers of too much error recovery in code (ask me about this one: it's a pip!), but gave me a very nice Smalltalk on a UNIX. Dave built the SOAR, and to his surprise found that very little of the additional hardware he contemplated did very much good: Smalltalk ran about as well on a regular RISC as it did on his "optimized" hardware, at least in emulation. So the SOAR chip he and his students ended up building was a simple RISC with, perhaps, one additional tag bit to help with garbage collection, or something like that. Years later, Sun came by and said, "We're sick to death of the 68000 architecture. We need a RISC. Got anything handy?" "Well," says Dave, "It just so happens..." ...and pulled the masks for the SOAR off the shelf. This turned into the SPARC architecture. So, if you ever wondered why ParcPlace/Objectworks Smalltalk, and other Smalltalks that do JIT compiling of methods into native code, do so well on SPARC machines, now you know. Mike O'Brien P.S. I take no responsibility for the truth of any of this, but this is my recollection.

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Smoothing Squeak's usability barriers
by Sebastian Sastre 24 May '07

24 May '07

Hi there, I been thinking about the value of blogs talking daily Squeak use. Squeak users/developers probably use the squeak's environment in different ways according to what they do/develop. And because Smalltalk was designed with the extremely valuable feature of making possible to be all inteligible for one individual, that sometimes could be a lonely task. That hasn't to be bad until the developer starts to loose valuable experiences because of that. For instance, if you are in pair programming, one developer could learn about a new way to find a method faster or a different class browser or a different subtle and clever way to use the browser, and so on... That subtlelties that are easily transmitted person to person so meetings, BOf's and educational experiences are great to patch that, but what if your profile just don't have access to that at certain moment to any of those? I think, (and I may be right or not in this) that there are lots of people that fits in this profile at least for some time and there is a gap on support to those people. The result of that gap is clear, or the person surpass it by itself or not. If is interesting to us that more persons can surpass that gap and find the completeness of the squeak experience I think that fact makes interesting to us to have vehicles (blogs are the more feasible I think) with articles that friendly introduces stories of developments that in fact are merely excuses to comunicate tips that should be fulfilling the gap. Even when they may seem to be silly for more experienced developers. I barely imagine a newbie's frustration to understand the complete cycle experience of developing with squeak because it happends to me the silly thing that I dicovered yesterday the preferences browser after some years of using squeak. Yes I know, I wasn't reading the menu and exploring that option by myself, but maybe that shouldn't be the only access to that information and access to information is what I'm talking about. Maybe universities and schools that uses Squeak are aware and have taken measures about this, but I wanted to put this here "just in case" and because I think that is valuable for squeak and the whole smalltalk comunity that we have more bolgs that concentrates the veteran squeakers virtual-environmental experiences that acts as welcome and friendly "doors" to the knowledge and people can have an emotionally smoother experiences surpassing the squeak/smalltalk experience gaps and knowledge barriers. cheers, Sebastian Sastre

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Setting targets for buttons
by subbukk 24 May '07

24 May '07

Hi, I noticed two menu entries for setting targets for buttons - set target and sight target. The first entry puts a list of classes of morphs in the current project while the second gives a crosshair cursor to pick the target. The second appears to be a better choice and sighting is done visually. Do we need both? I found another use for the first entry. By changing its selector to 'setTarget' instead of 'targetWith', I was able to create wrapper morphs around global objects like SmalltalkImage, Smalltalk, Cursor that are not visible in Morphic today. The menu entries which appear under "do..." in WorldMenu could be wrapped in such buttons and put into object catalog. "Doing with objects" is hard when they are not visible. Curious .. Subbu

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NewCompiler Literal Float bug
by nicolas cellier 24 May '07

24 May '07

Hey guys, i don't like this one answering SmallInteger 1 ClosureCompiler evaluate: '1.0'. That's a bug, isn't it?

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