[squeak-dev] Cuis update

Juan Vuletich juan at jvuletich.org
Wed Apr 15 01:54:47 UTC 2009


Michael van der Gulik wrote:
> Nice! It's a pretty fast system, and very similar to Squeak. I might
> adopt it as I don't particularly like the lagginess in my current
> Squeak environment.
>   

Thanks!
> My comments:
>
> * Yech! A baby-blue background! Why do Squeakers always use feminine,
> baby-like colours such as pink debuggers and bright green backgrounds?
> Why not a strong masculine dark-blue background?
>   

I have two little girls, 1 and 5 y.o. You're lucky the background is not 
pink! :)
> * BlockContext>>grabProcessor: relies on the implementation of the
> scheduler. This image would break on a hypothetical multi-core VM. I'd
> discourage it's implementation and use.
>   

Well, there are many things that would break in such a VM. For instance, 
you need to reimplement the scheduler. I found that grabProcessor: makes 
one specific concurrency pattern easy to use. We have some shared state. 
It might be modified by the UI and one or more lower priority processes. 
The default would be to protect everything with Semaphores. This is 
easier. The UI will not be preempted by lower priority processes. So, 
all I need in the UI is that event response methods leave the shared 
state consistent upon return. Each of the lower priority processes could 
be preempted while modifying the state, leading to problems. So, they 
use #grabProcessor:. The idea is this "I'm low priority. I can wait. But 
once you let me run, let me finish."

On a preempting or multithreading environment, this can implemented too 
if needed.

> * Have you fixed some Semaphore related bugs? I see tests but I
> haven't spent time trying to understand them.
>   

All those fixes are from Andreas. I just loaded them.
> * I like the fonts :-). And the seriously simplified menus. Not that I
> actually ever use them for anything more than opening a browser and
> workspace... and setting the background to dark blue.
>   

:)
> * Did you clean out a lot of methods from Object? It seems... tidier.
>   

Yes. I am cleaning all the time!
> * Yay! Keyboard navigation!
>   

Good! I am still not sure whether it is useful or not. You liking it is 
good news!
> I like it! It's got all the bits of Squeak I normally use, but with a
> lot less baggage. My main concern is how easily Monticello can be
> loaded into it.
>
> Gulik.
>
>   

I don't think loading Monticello should be a big problem. Please try. 
I'll try to help with any problems you find.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich



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