[squeak-dev] From 2010ce47@student.uet.edu.pk

Chris Cunnington smalltalktelevision at gmail.com
Sat Dec 15 18:22:52 UTC 2012


On 2012-12-15 12:44 PM, Azka Niazi wrote:
> Hi.
>
> My mates and I are trying to understand Scratch and how does it 
> interface with hardware.
> Scratch is written in Squeak. We understand that it is, however, 
> essential to get comfortable with Squeak/SmallTalk. We haven't found 
> any real documentations on it, however.
> Simply staring at the source code might not be the best strategy.
>
> One of our key targets right now is to get some map/key to the how is 
> the source code of Scratch constructed so that:
> 0. We can get an abstract view of the mechanisms involved.
> 1. We find out where do our concerns lie most (in the source code of 
> Scratch).
> 2. We can find a better way to go through 310,000 lines of source code 
> of Scratch.
>
> We hope you can help us get the map/key we are looking for.
> Please share anything that you might have on this stuff. _Any 
> guidelines/advise will be highly appreciated_.
> I am circumspect about emailing from a non-.EDU account. Due to some 
> issues I can't access my student.uet.edu.pk email address. And I can't 
> wait for Monday to get it fixed.
>
> Thank you.
> Azka
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Azka Arif Khan Niazi (2010-CE-47)
> The Computer Science and Engineering Department.
> University of Engineering and Technology,
> Lahore.
>
>
>
>
>
>
I don't know what you already know, so forgive me when I'm redundant.
Scratch uses the Morphic UI on a Squeak image with a virtual machine 
underneath. The Squeak version is, I think, 2.8 (as opposed to 4.4 which 
is about to come out) and came out in 2005. The important difference is 
that the virtual machine has changed. Modern vms are closure complete 
and have a JIT.

To see Squeak 2.8 when it was released. [7]
For some videos on Scratch from a Squeak perspective [3-6].
An introductory book on Squeak. [8]
Source code on the virtual machines. [2].
The Scratch image that will not work on a modern Squeak virtual machine. [1]
But will work on a virtual machine from a Squeakland Etoys release. [10]
As you first expressed interest with how Scratch interfaces with the 
hardware you may need to join the VM-Beginners list [9].

Chris

[1] http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Scratch_Source_Code_Licensed_Code
[2] http://squeakvm.org/index.html
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqV3nGD9N7U
[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwmQ1DoEjsA
[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGyfzw_gePo
[6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmTk9t71jZ4
[7] http://ftp.squeak.org/2.8/
[8] http://squeakbyexample.org/
[9] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/vm-beginners
[10] http://www.squeakland.org/

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