On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 9:03 AM, Gary Dunn  wrote:

> I am a big fan of FreeBSD and am running Squeak 3.9 on FreeBSD 7.1 and
> Gnome 2.4. Is there something else I need to learn about and develop
> Etoys? There is no Etoys port in the ports tree.

>> The port's a bit dated, installing Squeak 3.9-7. If you want something
>> later than that, Takeshi MUTOH has a beta 3.10 port at
>> http://qml.610t.org/squeak/VM_test.html.
>
> Thanks, but I'm sure I would not know the difference.

You _will_ know the difference if you want to use Etoys.

The version of Etoys in Squeak 3.9 is at least 3 years out of date
(and was not updated in 3.10 as far as I know.)

VPRI invested a lot of time and money in Etoys in recent years, so
that the current version available from
http://www.squeakland.org/download/ has both a new virtual machine
(VM) and a new smalltalk image.

You don't need to build it from a FreeBSD port repository.  You only
__need__ 4 things to use or develop with Etoys: the Etoys image file
(etoys.image), both Etoys sources files (EtoysV3.sources and
etoys.changes), and a Squeak virtual machine.

Squeak images work bit-identically on all platforms, so as long as you
get the latest image file and sources files, that is fine.  Unzip the
Linux DEB or RPM file from http://www.squeakland.org/download/ for the
current Etoys files.

A little more difficult is getting a VM, which should be matched to
your OS, your processor architecture, and ideally to Etoys.  The Etoys
VM has new multimedia plugins* and has been optimized for Linux on the
XO-1 One Laptop Per Child, though I guess that many of the changes
also work on other platforms.  I don't run FreeBSD, but I would
suggest trying one of the FreeBSD trunk VMs from
http://www.squeakvm.org/unix/ .  The changelogs at squeakvm.org
suggest that many - perhaps all - the Etoys fixes have been added to
those builds.  If a FreeBSD build doesn't work for you, another option
might be the Etoys Linux VM (from the Squeakland DEB or RPM package)
under Linux emulation.

(The Linux VM is in  ./usr/share/Etoys.app/Contents/Linux686/ in the
squeakland DEB archive.  Start it with with  Bert Freudenberg's shell
script etoys.sh included in the DEB/RPM.  It may not be 100%
functional - when Etoys tries to make a sound on my Ubuntu 9.04
machine I get "soundStart: snd_add_pcm_handler: Function not
implemented" but you may be more fortunate than me.)

* a virtual machine plugin is not a browser plugin.  Don't worry about
the browser plugin for now - the OLPC Sugar project doesn't use it
either, as far as I can tell.

> What does the web browser plug-in do? When I try to sample Etoys on the
> web site I am told I need the plug-in, yet one does not exist for
> FreeBSD. Is the Etoys system designed so only developers can build the
> apps, and students just play with the results via a web browser? Or is
> the idea to offer an alternative to installing Squeak, to reach a wider
> audience? If I have Squeak installed, do I need the browser plug-in?

None of the above.  In the way that the Sun Java browser plugin allows
you to play games (applets) in your browser window, and the Adobe
Reader plugin allows you to read PDFs without leaving your browser,
the squeak plugin allows you to play with an Etoys Project File
(squeaklet) by clicking a web link, such as the links on
http://www.pcs.cnu.edu/~rcaton/ancient/students.html .  You need to
install Etoys to use the browser plugin.

Anyone, student, teacher or hacker, can develop or improve an Etoy,
also known as a Project, by following the tutorials included in Etoys.

> Taking a step back, I have noticed that Squeak has gotten a lot more
> complex than the Smalltalk I worked with so many years ago. (Hint: it
> ran on Windows 3.1. Very slowly!) So complex that it may be
> inappropriate even for high school students.

I haven't looked closely at other Smalltalks, but I do have a Cincom
VisualWorks image, and Squeak looks similar to that, though the halos
and menus seem bigger.  If you want the Smalltalk you used 15 years
ago, you might find that your vendor offers  versions for current
operating systems.

Since you already know Smalltalk, the Squeak By Example book may help
explain the UI, development tools and syntax of Squeak 3.9 (and Squeak
3.10)
http://www.squeakbyexample.org/

There are some other educational tools based on Squeak: Botsinc,
Scratch and Alice come to mind.  Each teaches different things, and
may be more complicated than Etoys, but less complicated than the
standard Smalltalk development tools and language.

Hope that helps.  I have omitted some details that can be found
elsewhere, but if you need further pointers please come back to the
list.

David