On 17-02-2013, at 9:34 AM, Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de> wrote:

> Okay, I got it working:

Well done young man. You have passed the first stage of our tests; now, how would you like to pilot a StairFighter and help save the universe?

> * if you're new to RISC OS (like me), doing the "super-quick guide" tutorial is essential

Definitely. It is not your father's UI.

> * I'll wait while you fumble with the menus and mouse buttons. 

I spent a lot of effort persuading Acorn how mouse buttons should be used, how many their should be and why the Smalltalk approach was good. I partially succeeded. Note the lack of screen space being wasted on stupid menubars. Note that the menu is properly on the middle button.

> * in the web browser go to Tim's squeak page. Since text selection in the URL field does not work in any obvious way, feel free to use the backspace key. A lot. 

Ctl-U deletes the text in such an 'icon'. Note that you can select text pretty much anywhere (some places, for some reason, don't allow you to select a text range) and drag it up to the URL space. Cursor left-right & typing still work.

> * on Tim's page, scroll down and click the "version that worked somewhat better" link, then edit "3-9b" into "3-9d" in the URL field, and press return to attempt the download again. 

I haven't been keeping that up to date because I need a proper download page on squeakvm.org sometime soon.

> - once the download finished, drag the folder icon from the download window into the SD card window. 

Yup; the good news is that you can go off and open filer windows without losing the download widget.

> - open that new folder and double-click the included image 
> - if you get that error about StreamMan (which you will on a fresh system) this means it wants you to open the included "sharedsoundbuffer" folder and follow the instructions in its "ReadFirst" file, which will apparently install some modules into the system
> - I guess by analogy I should install the "deepkeys" modules, too? Haven't tried that yet. 

Urk. I was about to point out the READMERIGHTNOW file and notice that it isn't actually in that latest download. Sigh.

Yes, you need to install the deepkeys  and sharedsoundbuffer stuff for it to work well. Instructions are in the directories. Then rebooting is a good idea. I know, how terribly 1980s - but the deepkeys module needs to be installed very early in the boot process to do its job fully. C'est la vm.

> - the indication of it working is that the whole system freezes for a couple of seconds

Not strictly correct; while the image is *loading* you can get on with other stuff because it loads in 64kb chunks with a process swap check in between each one. While the image is starting up - a depressingly long process in recent images, somebody really needs to fix that - you will probably have trouble.

> - wait patiently, don't double-click again, because that will run yet another copy of the VM
> - and there it is! Squeak running. Yay!

That's the stuff. 

> - quitting from the world menu gives an error (writing the startup time stamp fails)

Hunh? Never seen that one before. OH! Wait a minute, were you running the image directly out of the zip file? You can actually do that, sorta, since RISC OS treats a zip file as a stupid directory. Depending upon which version of SparkFS you have you may or may not get write-back capability.
Just make a directory in a suitable place and drag the contents of the Zip to it.

> - there seams to be no context menu for the Squeak app in the dock bar, unlike other applications which have a Quit menu item there

Never got around to it. Probably should. All it does right now is bring the Squeak window to the front if you click on it.

> - quitting using the task manager works. That's the raspberry icon in the lower right. Might be more like killing, though. 

Nah, a perfectly ok way to quit without saving. Likewise the X icon on the top left of the window titlebar works.

> - possibly the Squeak folder is still zipped. It has a big Z emblazoned on it.  Which would explain why writes fail. No idea how to do that though.

See above.

> - command keys like printIt don't work. Perhaps that's what the deepkeys module is for?

Print Screen (on most keyboards, the old PC/AT standard with the Print Screen/SysRq label) is mapped to the squeak interrupt key like cmd-. on Macs. SysRq seemed a nice match.

> - a ReadMe would be nice. Some people actually like to read those :)

Blush. Forgot it.
> 
> But in any case, it does work! Nice :)
> 
> Thank you Tim!

You're welcome. Now evangelise! It works really nicely on a Pi. I haven't got around to trying Raspbian but quite a few people have told me RISC OS is much more responsive.


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Useful Latin Phrases:- Re vera, potas bene = Say, you sure are drinking a lot.