Serg (and all) --
Where did you get the CasioE105? -- I've had no luck with the dealers in LA that werelocated via the Casio website -- and the website sells the 100 but not the 105.
Cheers,
Alan
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At 12:47 PM -0800 8/5/99, Serg Koren wrote:
Just some observations...not exhaustive however.
Well I got a CasioE105 (MIPS R4000 WindowsCE device...very slick) and a 64M compact flash card (for all the audio books and music), and decided hey, this might be a cool environment try to learn (no I don't really know Smalltalk) Smalltalk/Squeak again on those long flights that I have to take for work.
And coincidentally, I saw an email posted by Dean Swan on here about installing Squeak on his CasioE100 (same as the 105 but without the multimedia and the extra memory). So thanks to Dean for a pointer to the MIPS VM (http://wwwisq.cs.uni-magedeburg.de/~raab/squeak/WindowsCE/MIPS), I got it installed. The first decision I made was to keep the exe in main memory and take advantage of the 64M card for the image, source, changes. (I could have fit everything into main memory, but I don't like clogging it up). So the first observation is that the FULL Squeak 2.4 fits on a CasioE105.
Ok, I got it installed, now would it run. Double tapping the image file (you need to install a third-party file browser to do this on the E105) caused the usual Windows(CE) headache of "this file is not associated with an application error. Hm...and I know that Squeak won't let you open an image by launching the executible...too bad...I still think this should be standard. Drag and drop doesn't work on the CE. What to do. The Casio doesn't come with a nice utility to map an extension to an application. Ptui! I hate MS. Ok, scrounging through the shareware/freeware sites I came across a launcher/desktop utility called StarTap. One of its features is to associate documents to applications. Ok...image associated with Squeak executable. Double-tap the image file and ooooooo the familiar Squeak desktop appears. Wow in color too! Oh oh. The startup Play With Me windows aren't resized or positioned according to available screen real-estate.
Suggestion (Note to self) #1:
Resize the Play With Me windows (and all windows) so that they fit to the devices screen size. If screen is smaller than 'x' then set screen size to device size and position upper left corner to (0,0)
Ok, I can close out the Play With Me windows for now. That works fine. I wonder what other windows do. Open up a browser. Gee it sizes correctly. I wonder why the Play With Me windows act differently. The browser is sized to fit the device's screen. But the origin isn't (0,0)...it should be.
Suggestion (Note to self) #2:
Related to #1. All windows should reposition to (0,0) if the screen size is smaller than "x" to make use of the limited space available.
Ok...lets see if Morphic works ok. Morphic works nicely. And even the piano keyboard morph works and Squeak sound works fine on the Casio.
Ok...let's try Alice. This has the same problem with screen size. The windows that are open by default are too big for the screen. However, Energizer bunny seems to run fine.
Back to the base world. Popping up a menu seems a bit sluggish, more sluggish than the rest of the environment. Moving, resizing windows, and using the flap out menus seem to respond well. Wonder why popping up a menu by tapping on the desktop is so slow to respond.
Ok, lets try some code entry...lets see if that's usable. Bring up the virtual keyboard to tap in some code into a browser. That works and the code runs. Close out the virtual keyboard. Oh oh...Squeak doesn't recognize or respond to the fact that hte virtual keyboard is no longer displayed and Squeak doesn't refresh the screen. So I have a ghost keyboard image. Ok force a screen redraw from the Squeak menu. That works...sort of. I have some Keyboard droppings around the border and edges of the Squeak window.
Suggestion (Note to self) #3:
Either fix the screen refresh...probably too difficult and too closely tied to the Casio WinCE environment. Or build a Squeak virtual keyboard (sort of like the piano) for text entry via mouse/pen taps for systems that don't have physical keyboards....speech recognition is probably out of the question.
That's it for now. I haven't tried networking or any of the other Squeak goodies.
If anyone wants to tackle the above items feel free to do so. Or if someone wants to point me in the right direction, that would be appreciated as well, although as I said, I really don't know Squeak/Smalltalk and it would probably be faster if you did it ;-)
Generally speaking, I think the full Squeak would work VERY well on the CasioE105 (assuming you have the memory for all the pieces.) I did run Squeak with just the VM and the image. That works too with the normal limitations, and the startup warnings of missing files didn't fit the screen size ;-)
Thoughts, suggestions, etc. are all welcome.
Cheers, S