************************ This is the transcript from the July 8, 1992 irc meeting of Smalltalk users. Some of the clearly irrelevant ramblings have been edited out. ************************ Hi, my name is mike oltz. I just want to observe today... I will +be starting to program in smalltalk soon. welcome I work for the computing center at Cornell U. what ST will you be using? Probably Digitalk because of $ issues. I hear that I'm a VWin user hi jco so i'll keep quiet mostly. Hello, mjb Which ST do you use, mjb? VWin v2.0 and you? do you generally leave the topic blank? *** muhr has joined channel #programSt ParcPlace. Now in the process of switching over from 4.0 to 4.1 (what a +pain!!!) Hello Smalltalkers! the topic is not blank on my server, let me double check it... brb, +hi muhr okay, it isn't blank now. First question: Do we have 10.00 PDT now? 10:02:00 Thank you I set my watch from WWV in Colorado last night. (National Bureau of Standards at 5.0, 10.0, 15.0 MHz) yep *** Portnoy has joined channel #programST hopefully there will be someon here from europe who went to ECOOP and can +give us a report It is 7 pm here in Berlin what were topics of previous meetings? then the difference in this +one will be clear to me (i wasn't here for them) great they have been open subject meetings hello thomas, i read your name on some articles in +comp.lang.smalltalk Adele Goldberg was here for the first meeting Is this channel in any moderated or organized? .. way .. can't say she'll be here today wow. mjb: welcome martin, at least someone who will keep a log not exactly, I capture it and will upload the capture to the archives we are waiting for version 4.1 of objectworks to come... here is a question: what is a good real-life analogy to the process +of designing/developing a Smalltalk application? *** muhr is now known as tomMuhr Still waiting Portnoy? Already got it here. (or is that answered in all of the textbooks) jco: for what platform? Hello Portnoy Portnoy: DECstation and SPARC mikeoltz: having headache |-) Portnoy: what platform are you waiting for? jco: decstation tm: :-) perhaps it is 'shipped' :-) but the ship is slow. :) a rowboat... muhr: which version do you have? muhr: did you go to ECOOP I feel very ashamed, but I'm using ST/V 286 & Windows muhr: when would you not be ashamed? mjb: a college was at the ecoop ? *** ninjam has joined channel #programst Although I have ObjectWorks at my disposal. My image and me, we got +very close friends over the last years. *** ninjam has left channel #programST he said: nothing really new, all wanted to sell their things Topic: Ideosyncrasy & the Smalltalk image mjb: Portnoy meant 'colleague' ah sorry, english is still not my motherlanguage but one package i'm enthusiastic of today: CODE 4.1 from doug skuce of cananda for objectworks 4.0 Topic proposal: Why is there such low traffic in posting reusable +code to publicly accessible servers or groups? a knowledge analysis and managment system does anyone know the CODE system or is interested? Could you say something more about CODE 4.1? because the number of expert Smalltalk programmers is < number of +expert C programmers? CODE 4.1: Object-Oriented analysis of knowledge, graphic and outline +user interface tm: a beginner such as myself would not write good classes, so they +would not be reusable let alone not embarrass the writer.... CODE: something like a crossing of semantic nets, frame and expert +systems Another topic: What is a "good" class? CODE: as a smalltalk programmer you will get used to it very quick tm: a class whose function and use is clear to other Smalltalkers, +and one which is applicable flexibly. tm: also usefulness helps. can you name such classes in the original images? the sort of classes i shared and wanted to share were minor +enhancements, Would anyone be interested in an IRC app done in st80R4? know found in version 4.1 (hopefully) tm: you weren't here when I said i haven't done any Smalltalking +yet, but would begin soon... I see so I should keep my mouth shut, really. mikeoltz: Have you decided, what dialect you will be using? jco: beside the 'we can do that in smalltalk too' effect, what would +be the advantage? tm: our budget has decided: not Park Place. sigh. mikeoltz: Dont be too worried: Digitalks ST/V Win isnt too bad Portnoy: Graphical user interface, and the attendant ease of use. mikeoltz: If you're university or the like, ST80 will be cheaper (if +you do NOT intend to deliver runtime versions) jco: now you mention it, i get some ideas, how it could be improved +by a gui. *** mao has joined channel #programST tm: Digitalk is $200 educational; we will be writing a networked +application so tm: we certainly will be distributing it all over the place. Portnoy: it has three panes. Two at the top providing a channel list +and a user list. The bottom is the message area... jco: sorry, again: since when did you get 4.1? jco: I am using a DOS client written using Turbo Vision. One pane +for input, one for system msgs, one per channel. Portnoy: you click on the channel you want and then the top right pane +shows the people on that channel. If you click on a user, then you're +sending private messages to that user. Our main application is still in ST/V 286 because of speed and +tradition and accessibility of low level functions, which are all hidden in +primitives in ST/V Win jco: of course i can't run any other programs at the same time... jco: see my mouth dripping? yes, this would certainly be a great +thing jco: sounds very nice Portnoy: we just got 4.1 a couple of weeks ago. Since we're in +Sunnyvale (ParcPlace's new home!), I'm sure the shipping time to us is a lot +less than for you! jco: Can you do it now? tm: we will need to hook up to lots of GUI primitives to do +multimedia and networking stuff. mike: irc for DOS: is it free and where? *** LS has joined channel #programST HELLO evrybody !!! welcome LS Portnoy: I don't remember where it is from. you are frerk at +piccolo, yes? I can send you location later. mikeoltz: ST/V Win seems to be the right tool. The new version 2.0 +claims to support MultiMedia mike: yes, thanks, frerk@informatik.uni-kl.de 1 mjb ; what that stands for ? hello .. ? ls: type /whois mjb not coffee... my initials LS: do you program in Smalltalk? no , not yet ! Anyone here programming in ST/V ... ? yes VWin 2.0 jco: any experience on compatibility of 4.1 vs 4.0 yet? mjb: You're lucky. We are waiting for more than a month. What we get +is lots of redundant adverts anyone care for a peace from my pizza ? tom: where are you located? LS: what's on it? oops piece Portnoy: I'm going through that now. Since this is my first upgrade +experience, it is VERY painful. anchovy :add pizza Berlin (West....) tM : lots of cheese , tabasco , oils and paparoni !! ah... now make a class for that, LS LS: Ok, I'll take a piece sure , just jump over ... LS: Where are you? You're not having a pizza for breakfeast? he is in Israel one of my current interests is artificial life (AL)... and so I thought I'd whip up a version of Conways LIFE game in ST/VWin... it seems it would bve a great fit for ST... cells could be objects that respond to 'evaluate', 'turnOn', and +'turnOff'... LS: Where in Israel? *** markb has joined channel #programst in Haifa \whois tomMuhr LS: I have relatives in Tel Aviv Portnoy: did you go through the 2.5 to 4.0 upgrade? no, use the slash the other way, LS mjb: are you implementing AL in Smalltalk? tM ; yea ? i'm studin` in T.A. university ! ah. jco: thank god, no. but some project members two years ago did yes VWin... it works fine upto a grid size of 12x12... jco: i think it was a much bigger jump from 2.5 to 4.0 markb: hi! do you program in Smalltalk? Portnoy: same situation here. Another group member here did the 2.5 to +4.0. This time I get to do the 4.0 to 4.1. This has really got to be +Smalltalk's achille's heel! Hi, no, I don't.... with larger sizes the program starts to load then backsout, gracefully, +but without any system msg's... LS: I visited TA Uni this March I don't even know what smalltalk is. It is an object-oriented programming language. I see. As far as object-oriented goes, it makes C++ look sick. tM: what do you think about it ? markb Smalltalk is an object oriented programming language *** Calvino has joined channel #programST Closest I've ever come to oop is Visual Basic... hi Calvino Hi all. did you see my msg's to you on irc the other night? what platforms does it run on? PC? How long will this meeting last? Is there a kind of time-out? jco: i thought they would make a bigger jump: who were you addressing, mjb? mapping smalltalk processes to threads, DOS 286's, Windows, OS/2, X Windows... tM : are you from Berlin ? > (continuing... LIFE) currently Digitalk is looking at my code to see why +larger gridsizes are not being accomodated... LS: Yes but this would mean losing the mac and DOS platforms well baybay !! *** markb has left channel #programST Conway's original game was at 128x128, as I recall, a long way to go. beb *** Signoff: LS (Leaving) ALL: does anyone know of a possibility to display graphic objects +as postscript instead of displaying them on a graphic context? no definite end to the meeting Tom it just kind of dribbles off... the Esperanto meetings on Tuesdays are the same way. (I used to attend Sunday night Amiga confs that would have 80-100 +people online, whew!) jco: maspar = massive parallel? Portnoy: yup, you got it. re Portnoy's question: is this an inherent capability in any of the +GUIs on which Smalltalk is available? jco: maspar in smalltalk? mike: could be, but someone has to do the work, What is the latest version for Smalltalk v/PM and Smalltalk V/WIN mike: just write new displayOn: methods that output postscript Portnoy: nope. We're not doing any parallel programming in smalltalk +(other than one experiment). The programming environment for our machine is +done with smalltalk. win 2.0 PM 1.4 yes? mao: VWin is at version 2.0 jco: even with MVC, or do you find it easier then say MOTIF Widgets? Does PM 1.4 take advantage of OS/2 2.0? *** widmann has joined channel #programST Portnoy: I didn't understand your question. well, it runs under such at least. *** widmann is now known as Norbert hello, Norbert, do you program in Smalltalk? Hello. Yes, I work with Smalltalk V Windows Geez. All these ST/V people. Who other than Portnoy and myself work +with ParcPlace Objectworks/Smalltalk? jco: when i want a hardcopy of a huge graph, jco: i don't want to hardcopy the x-window but... I guess Parcplace is simply too expensive jco: Well, I work with it. I'll be coming back later. not for everybody, Norbert, or they wouldn't be in business! I work with ParcPlace Smalltalk-80 jco: display it on a postscript context instead of a graphics +context the lasttime there was a dearth of VWin users, glad to see 'em :) who If I find a free modem port...... BTW, I have heard that Parcplace is plann gxis la revido ... i mean, see you later, tm I'm using it right now. *** Signoff: tomMuhr (Leaving) OOPS, I meant that Parcplace is not taking any runtime Licenses any +more huh? do you mean runtime is free now? if it get's too confusing, we could split the cahnnels to ST/V and +ST80 be right back It's only a rumor I heard. Anything true about it ? *** Signoff: Calvino (Calvino) *** Baz has joined channel #programST hello, Baz, do you program in Smalltalk? Portnoy: Hmmm, I'll have to check to see what we do. Our program +prints out stuff in postscript. Not sure how it does it, or even if its the +smalltalk code thats doing it. *** Calvino has joined channel #programST whew. rehhi calvino hello, Yes - I do - a parcplace derivative called BrouHaHa. Calvino: have you upgraded to 4.1? wow, it must be the middle of the night for you, Baz... jco: Yes, I have. mikie> no - its 18:53 for me in England (just borrowing a machine in +korea!) Calvino: how'd it go? I'm in the process of trying to get our app to +work under 4.1. Painful. I found MVC in Smalltalk-80 very impressive. But ST V doesn't support +it. jco: Well, the changes in Paragraph Editor broke my Emacs bindings, +but once I fixed those, I hardly noticed anything else :) mao: How can you have a Smalltalk without MVC? jco: What are you doing that got broken? *** Signoff: mao (mao) ? *** Signoff: Baz (h.ece.uiuc.edu close.cs.columbia.edu) *** Signoff: Norbert (h.ece.uiuc.edu close.cs.columbia.edu) *** Signoff: Portnoy (h.ece.uiuc.edu close.cs.columbia.edu) net split ARRGH!!!! NET SPLIT!!! BAD ONE!!! Calvino: well, I haven't gotten real far yet, but we have this change +sorter that helps manage change sets. It mucks with things like +MethodDictionary>whichSelectorsReferTo: and other fairly low-level stuff net split? yes, somewhere a link in the net IRC is using went down. ah and the people on the other side all went bye-bye jco: That does sound pretty painful. *** Portnoy has joined channel #programST *** Norbert has joined channel #programST *** Baz has joined channel #programST at least as far as we can see. maybe to them it looks like we all +went away. welcome back. welcome back guys Portnoy: Has anyone written a nice document giving advice on the +process? Calvino: FileDirectory doesn't exist any more. That one bit me pretty +bad. (wow - what happened to them??)| That was called a 'net split'. jco: The first Smalltalk I used was GNU Smalltalk, for learning +general things. But I really didn't start programming real things until 4.1. Somewhere two IRC servers stopped talking to each other for a +minute. anyone hurt? -) Calvino: huh? do you really mean 4.1??? nice to have you back! jco: Yep. 4.1 before it was released. funny, we thought you had left... were there 2 splits? Calvino: so who do you know? Portnoy: My app relies *heavily* on BitBlt!! no, on each side of the split, it looks like everyone on the other +side quit. jco: 4.1: from parcplace usa to heeg germany to university +kaiserslautern to my working group to me (uff) thanx mikeoltz: I know everyone! Calvino: Ahh, I see. We had the 4.1 beta, but we only used it for the +VM, 'cause the 4.0 VM wouldn't work on one of the models of the decstation +5000 that we have here. mikeoltz: at ParcPlace, that is. *** Signoff: Norbert (noc.belwue.de TU-Muenchen.DE) baz: what is your app? jco: 5000/240! Portnoy: yup! jco: It works now? Calvino: the 4.1 VM works fine. i think our distributor gets a message real soon! Portnoy: Its a hypertext structured editor. I didn't like paragraph +editor etc. and reimplemented, onlythis time for structureddocuments *** Norbert has joined channel #programST jco: Cool. Anyway, yeah. How I'm delving into low-level stuff for +an MH interface, NNTP reader, etc. (so I can stop using Emacs..:). So I'll +get to be one of the lucky ones if the VI changes significantly. baz: very interesting, we are working on hypertext too ^How^Now Helllo again Baz: is this a commerical product? likewise ht. I just don't get it fully with irc commercial. hello? long pauses tend to precede a split. Portnoy: You couldn't offer me a job could you ? :-) mikeoltz: no - its a university research project. baz: structured means outline or hyperchaos or better? baz: what your e-mail? Calvino: Dealing with image upgrades has got to be the worst part of +programming in smalltalk. Portnoy: bp@cs.hull.ac.uk Portnoy: structured means our nodes have structure - paragraphs contain +words etc. baz: thanks, our ht is a university research tool too oh, like SGML. Portnoy: What do you mean by hyperchaos? baz: are the links typed or labeled, do you have composite nodes, +what is the granularity of the nodes? jco: Yeah. It's one of my pet peeves. There must be ways of reducing +the impact. Calvino: smalltalk needs some of the features of Dylan that deal with +this. the Computer Crash Dummies suggest you wear a seatbelt and shoulder +harness... i never heard of Dylan until the latest PC Week. jco: There are still people who haven't recovered from 2.5->4.0, for +crying out loud! i must live on the wrong coast or something. mike: what the * is Dylan? it's something from Apple for supposedly easy programming. that's +all i know. not compatible with anything else, natch. mike: must be something funny about it? Portnoy: Dylan is an object-oriented dynamic language being developed +by Apple. It's syntax is Lisp-ish, but it is completely object-oriented. Portnoy: The nodes are composite - yeah. The nodes can be *anything*, +i(sorry this machine is *really* slow) Well, Dylan is used for the operating system. It's not at all clear +one will be able *program* the machines, per se. oh i got it, DYnamic LANguage Hmm... Apple and object-oriented, and Lisp. I've got it: +Apple-flavored Fruit LOOPS! yet another CLOS Calvino: I'm just glad I didn't have to do the 2.5 to 4.0 conversion!!! {/msg Baz Going over Koreas isn't the easiest Way :-) Portnoy: NO! not another CLOS. Sorry, using a 2400 Modem and a bad phone line :-( baz: we have an enhancement that lets every smalltalk object look +like a hypernode Portnoy: send me a paper!! me too...drool...slobber... baz: it's not as useful as it sounds, baz: because the only editor for it is the system-browser of +smalltalk Portnoy: :-) Why did you do it? baz: well i didn't do it and this was my personal opinion baz: but i have to work with it anyway jco: How does Dylan cope with class change? DOes it have multiple +namespaces (or the equivalent)? Portnoy: I know exactly how you feel!! baz: the problem is, how can i save the structure other than in an +image Calvino: Dylan has 'modules' to define multiple namespaces. jco: Aha. Dylan: "The answer, my friend, is Newton in your hand...the answer +is Newton in your hand." :) Portnoy re: save the structure: We are using a object oriented +distributed database developed by another iuniveristy to store our documents. baz: is it multi-user? baz: do you know the ISLE project, it has to be near you Portnoy: Program Development with more than 1 Developer is quite +difficult in ST Portnoy: Not at a fine-grained level. The level of locking will +probably be "the document", anything more ambitious and we'll run out of +time. Portnoy: ISLE? no.... does anyone use application organizer? (i do not) Baz: Is the OODBMS written completely in ST? baz: we have an object-server, a smalltalk image that stores +objects for other images make that OODDBMS baz: the problem is the namespace (the "distributed" part is important) mikeoltz & Norbert: Yes the OODDBMS is completely written in Smalltalk, +apart from a few VM changes. mike: Why? baz: you need new ids for every distributed object *** Signoff: jco (Leaving) Norbert: its a distributed dbms and how do you get the object back, if you don't know the id? mike: Has it some kind of distributed Servers or is only the data +distributed? Portnoy: Our colleqgues have to worry about all that stuff! Norbert: baz is the chap to ask. baz: vm changes? (chap?) Portnoy: oh yeah - we use *nmaes* for our documents that are held in a +global object table (or something like that!) Portnoy: I dunno about the VM changes. They are the BrouHaHa VM, so use +in PP 4.1 seems remote :-( baz: is the oodbms running in a different image? mike> yup - I'm a chap!! Portnoy: The ooDdbms runs all over the net! Calvino: BrouHaHa was developed at Queen Mary College in the University +of London as a portable smalltalk. See the paper in OOPSLA '87 baz: smalltalk is great, but how comes that i want it distributed, +persistent, multiple inheritance, typed? Portnoy: You want it TYPED!! (Blasphemy) Portnoy: yeah - we always want the next model! *** aknight has joined channel #programST welcome, folks, do you program in Smalltalk? oh, mjb is back...didn't recognize you... just call me port this is called using two processes. you have multiple +personalities... i wondered when you'd Bebak... > ok mark, i changed Bye, phone line is too bad. *** Signoff: Norbert (Leaving) baz: say why going over korea, no official access? Portnoy: The sysman couldn't get an irc client to compile on this grungy +Amdahl. *AT&T UNIX) I guess I can pick up the transcript from the archive site. Portnoy had just said that he wanted Smalltalk to be distributed, +persistent, multiple inheritance and typed. aknight: is that possible?!?! and some reacted to the Knight part. There are about 10 great arguments in there... aknight: some topics: v4.1/4.0/2.5, Hypertext in ST80, ST/V (?), +lack of goodies i mean, TYPED part. fui. Everything sounds okay except the typed bit... And I'm not convinced of the wortthiness of multiple inheritance. perhaps i have to explain: smalltalk is for programming, Or at least a sensible way of implementing it. what i sometimes want is a representation of the real world only and what is it other than typed if i write: anObject isKindOf: aClass ifTrue: [] ifFalse: [] multiple inheritance is easy to get in smalltalk: *** Signoff: aknight (Ping timeout) change some variables and methods in the metaclass the point is what to do when conflicts appear? merge? *** aknight has joined channel #programST which is difficult, non? two methods with the same name are inherited, which whould i take? i ask the user :-)