To: squeak@cs.uiuc.edu cc:
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Hi Folks.
HOT NEWS!!!!
I have just released a new, native OS/2 port of Squeak. It can be found in our pages at SUGAR Smalltalk Users Group ARgentina.
There was already a way to run Squeak in OS/2. For version 1.2 of Squeak, Boris Shingarov had done a small modification to allow OS/2 run the UNIX version, under XWindows emulation. But XWindows support isn't installed in OS/2 by default, and I haven't tried it, but I think the screen redraw speed shouldn't be good.
So I thought that something better was nedded. I first tried the IBM's Open32 API, which is a Win32 API emulator. I could compile the Windows version of Squeak, but again the screen redraw speed was too slow.
So I wrote an all new Squeak port, made especifically for OS/2. I used a game oriented display API from IBM called DIVE, that uses hardware acceleration to achieve fast display updates. (It somewhat similar to DirectX in Windows.) The result is a perfectly usable Squeak on my 486 machine without the need for the 'Defer Display Update' trick.
I included a practical mapping of several keys. Delete behaves like Shift-Backspace (forward delete), Ctrl-Break and Esc are the interrupt keys and, Ctrl-Ins, Shft-Ins and Shft-Del manage the clipboard (emulating Alt-c, Alt-v and Alt-x). Besides all Squeak color depth are supported from 1 to 32 bit. If you select a Squeak color mode with more colors that your OS/2 desktop, color dithering will occur.
This first version doesn't still have support for sound, MIDI, serial port, networking or joystick. It just has the minimum functionality for running. I will later add the rest.
System requeriments: + Long file name support (install Squeak on a HPFS drive) + DIVE video dlls (Installed by default by OS/2 4, but can be added to any OS/2) + Video mode with at least 256 colors, and support for DIVE (most drivers should work)
Read about it and download it from http://www.sugarweb.com/squeak/ports/os2native/os2english.htm
Write me with bug reports, suggestions and comments.
Enjoy!
Juan Manuel Vuletich jvuletic@dc.uba.ar
Hi Juan Manuel,
I have just released a new, native OS/2 port of Squeak.
Saw it. Great job!!!
Boris Shingarov had done a small modification to allow OS/2 run the UNIX version, under XWindows emulation. But XWindows support isn't installed in OS/2 by default, and I haven't tried it, but I think the screen redraw speed shouldn't be good.
Just very small correction here. My port uses XFree86 for OS/2 which I can't regard as 'emulation'. It's true XFree86; the source to XFree86 is the same for the OS/2 version and the Unix versions. XFree86/2 uses its own Ring 0 driver to directly access the video hardware, and uses the same hardware acceleration mechanisms as on other Unices. So it's not emulation no-no-no. The real bottle- neck here is that usually you connect to the X server via TCP/IP; but the recent versions of XFree86 support Shared Memory and so does Squeak; so the screen redraw speed is _AMAZINGLY_ good.
I included a practical mapping of several keys.
Something I _really_ loved.
This first version doesn't still have support for sound, MIDI, serial port, networking or joystick.
I'm trying to get the net working (although it's somewhat orthogonal to what I do with Squeak now).
Btw, did you try Cheese 5 yet?
Regards,
Boris
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