Aaron

between 3.8 and 3.9 the morphic speeds up. So could you check if this  
has
an impact on your analysis. And we are interested in the Nokia 770.

Stef


On 5 oct. 06, at 01:19, Aaron Reichow wrote:

> Hola everyone!
>
> First... Hi! I'm back! I've not been on the list for a year or two,  
> lots
> of stuff going on. Things have died back some, so I'm going to be  
> getting
> back into Squeak finally! I am going to start by helping out with  
> this new
> documentation initiative, working on Morphic tutorials.
>
> Now for Squeak on the 770...
>
> As someone else pointed out, I have a Nokia 770 now. It's an awesome
> little device, with one major flaw: a 220 MHz CPU. Now, I've used  
> Squeak
> on PDAs with similar CPUs- 206 MHz StrongARMs in a PDA like the iPAQ
> 3650/3150.  Morphic was usable under Squeak 2.8 and to a lesser extent
> 3.0.  When I was using PDAs that slow, 3.2+ was never really tried,
> because it was a lot harder to shrink those images to a small  
> enough size.
> The iPAQ I used then had 16 MB of RAM, so I was dealing with images  
> of 6
> MB or smaller.  A lot of folks seem to be surprised that I wasn't  
> using
> MVC back then- I've always used Morphic on my PDAs.  I usually  
> sacrificed
> some features in newer images to use an older Squeak with Morphic.   
> Squeak
> 2.8 is very fast, capable and useful- not perfect, but it isn't  
> something
> that belongs only in a museum of computer archeology.
>
> However, Squeak has gotten a lot slower in recent versions.  I  
> personally
> haven't used an image newer than 3.4 or 3.6 on any WinCE or Linux- 
> based
> PDA, but if Squeak got slower between 3.4/3.6 and 3.9g, then I  
> imagine it
> is way too slow. When I say "Squeak is slow" in this context I mean  
> the
> way Morphic feels as a user, not that the results of 0  
> tinyBenchmarks has
> been getting slower over time. This includes actions like the time it
> takes for a window to redraw it self after you've resized it and gone
> mouseUp; the framerate at which Morphs are redrawn when being  
> dragged; the
> time it takes for a menu to pop up; the time it takes for a button to
> register and pushed.
>
> As a result, a project I am planning on persuing is getting
> wxWidgets/Squeak to work on the 770. I'd really like to see this  
> happen.
> I personally don't mind Morphic one bit- I prefer it in a lot of  
> ways to a
> "regular" GUI toolkit.  But, it may get us the UI speed we need. Then
> again, it may not. I'm not sure how feasible this is, but I'll find  
> out
> when I have the development environment I need.
>
> Until wxWidgets/Squeak is ported to the 770, or until something  
> miraculous
> happens with Morphic or the VM, I plan on running older versions of  
> Squeak
> on any PDA, just as a matter of neccesity. I'm undecided what version-
> it'll depend on what kind of performance I get on the 770.  Until
> recently, I was using 3.4, mainly because it could access SqueakMap.
> However, SM no longer works on anything older than 3.8, so I will
> certainly move back to at least 3.2, possible 2.8 considering the  
> slowness
> of the Nokia 770's CPU.
>
> Like someone else mentioned, some basic work has been done and it  
> does run
> on the 770. See: http://tech.inhelsinki.nl/2006-08-29/ However, I  
> have no
> copy of Squeak for the 770 right now- the person did the work hasn't
> shared a binary yet, though he said he'd send me one eventually.  I'd
> compile it myself, but I've no Linux/x86 machine for running the  
> 770 SDK.
>
> One thing I need is access to a Linux machine via SSH for hosting  
> the gcc
> cross-compiler for the Nokia 770.  If possible, an x86 machine  
> would be
> preferable. I have a PPC OS X machine at home, but that's it.  If  
> anyone
> would be willing to hook me up with access to a machine with the  
> requisite
> software installed, that would be really awesome! Please email me  
> if you
> can help.
>
> Well... I plan on being active on the list again, so I doubt this  
> is the
> last you'll see of me. If you'd like to discuss Squeak, please stop  
> by the
> Squeak IRC channel- #squeak on irc.freenode.net.  Contrary to the  
> ideas
> some people have of IRC/chat, we have some very productive  
> conversations
> there, in addition to being a place where Squeakers interact socially.
>
> Regards,
> Aaron
> (celebrating his triumphant return to the squeak-dev list... :D )
>
> revaaron at bitquabit.com || rev in #squeak on irc.freenode.net
>    "Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must
>          raise themselves to Liberty." -- Emma Goldman
>