[squeak-dev] SqueakMap for documentation?

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Fri Feb 25 05:12:53 UTC 2011


As a demonstration, I threw together some (very) brief slides about
Maui and slapped them up on SqueakMap.  Refresh your Catalog, then
install the 'slides' release of the 'Maui' package in the Catalog.  My
slide-presentation will pop-up on the desktop.

To answer your question at a higher level, there are two parts to SqueakMap:

  1) an elegant object model which is the catalog of Squeak packages.
Each package has an OrderedCollection of Releases.  Each Release knows
what version of Squeak it works in and other things too.  It also
knows its #downloadUrl.

  2) The #downloadUrl can refer to a file that is a file on an
external web-site or a file on the SqueakMap web-site itself.  The
important point is that it refers to a _file_ that SqueakMap gives to
its own "SMInstaller" to install.  SMInstaller is not redundant with
Installer.  SMInstaller installs several types of external files, such
has human language files, for example.  But the most generally
powerful one it can install is ".sar", which means Smalltalk Archive.

A Smalltalk Archive is not only a way to publish MC-packages and
st-scripts, but to also include any necessary resource files as well.
My slide-presentation is just a .morph file, which I made by filing
out the root Morph of the slide-presentation.  The resource files
could just as easily be documents in any other format, graphics,
movies, sound samples, entire databases, or even other Squeak images..

I should mention, Squeak and Pharo include SARInstaller, out-of-the-box.

This rawness is the beauty of SqueakMap:  it assures maximum
compatibility and maximum flexibility without needing to reinvent
anything.  It's a tool that allows us all to be publishers on a rich
medium.  It's full access to the consumer's image (assuming security
permissions are enabled in the VM, of course) where we can really
showcase our ideas and projects using this great medium for doing just
that; Squeak itself.  We should do it!

I know SqueakMap has lost popularity because it has struggled with
usability, but this has mostly been addressed:  I've recently added
the Release editor for publishing load-scripts straight-away from the
image, and for demos and documentation we have MaSarPackage which
provides a nice GUI to generate the SAR's that install automatically..

 - Chris


On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 3:32 PM, Ken G. Brown <kbrown at mac.com> wrote:
> What would it take to get SqueakMap to work for documentation?
>
> Wouldn't it be nice if SqueakMap could become the first place to go to find documentation as well as program packages?
>
> Ken G. Brown
>
>



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