[squeak-dev] Clashing semantics for #asCollection between Stream parser(S) and MaClientServer

Chris Muller asqueaker at gmail.com
Tue Aug 13 04:54:09 UTC 2019


Just for a clarification:

On Mon, 12 Aug 2019, tim Rowledge wrote:
>
> > I just loaded the Xtreams and Levente's GoogleWikiCompiler into an image
> that already had Chris' MaClientServer package.
> >
> > Running the GoogleWikiCompiler example failed! Oh noes!
> >
> > Turns out that in GoogleWikiCompiler>LinkShort: the use of
> > address, '.html'
> > to merger a collection of characters with the string '.html' relies on
> the implementation semantics of #asCollection to leave a String as a String


That's a bug in that code.  Brent Pinkney originally implemented
#asCollection to be a pointer collection (e.g., not bytes), to support
concatenation syntax, as in:

   myObject1, myObject2, myObject3    "==> { myObject1. myObject2.
myObject3 }"

It was also to allow input arguments of methods which expected collection
arguments to also allow single arguments.

The history is, it was proposed for Squeak, but someone objected, but to at
least _allow_ people to load and use it optionally,
Collection>>#asCollection and two senders in core code were needed.

GoogleWikiCompiler should be fixed.


- after all, it's a collection of characters, right?
> >
> > However, Chris has changed that for MaClientServer such the String is
> returned as
> > Array with: theString
> > which doesn't play nice with the above.
> >
> > I'm not entirely sure I like either approach really; #($a $b $c) , 'foo'
> doesn't seem like such a great thing to do, especially if you can't
> guarantee what the actual state of the 'address' object is (that's a bigger
> issue around the parser behaviour) BUT 'foo' asCollection -> #( 'foo')
> doesn't seem quite nice either. I could sort of appreciate 'foo'
> asCollection -> #($f $o $o) I suppose.
> >
> > The immediate solution within the context of the swiki parsing is to
> carefully make sure the address is actually a string, so no major issue for
> me today, but this does indicate a potentially problematic perplexity when
> mixing xtreams and client server packages.
>
> If MaClientServer implements String >> #asCollection, then that's a
> mistake, which breaks #,.
>

No it doesn't.  The package also adds Collection>>#, to maintain the proper
function, but Tim simply didn't mention that.

Best,
  Chris




>
> I came to the conclusion that without a proper html generator,
> GoogleWikiCompiler cannot create correct output.
> I have attached a version of GoogleWikiCompiler (attached), which uses our
> internal tool: StreamingHtmlCanvas (also attached) to generate html.
> Yes, that's another dependency, but that's how things go, isn't it? :)
>
> Also, I had to convert the address variable to a string in links actions.
> I think you've done the same in your image.
>
> Levente
>
> >
> > tim
> > --
> > tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> > Fractured Idiom:- VISA LA FRANCE - Don't leave chateau without it
>
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