Language/OS - Multiplatform Resource Library/LANGUAGE OS.iso/smaltalk/irc.lha/irc/st_irc8_92.txt

Text File | 1993-07-24 | 20KB | 384 lines

Transcript from the Aug 5, 1992 meeting of Smalltalk users on irc.

Due to a capture buffer error, the first third of the meeting is
missing.  Your not missing much.  This file does include all (?)
of the most interesting talk, IMO.

                                  - mjb -

                               [e-mail]


<tmu> MDI means Multiple Document Interface. This is becoming a kind of
+standard interface framework for windows applications. The Windows
+Filemanager and the Sysedit utility are MDI applications
<Rolf> Any expieriences with using a Smalltalk system with a *Group* of
+programmers ?
<Baz> Rolf: only painful ones!
<tmu> ST/V uses bubblesort for adding elements to SortedCollections!
<Baz> tmu: What!!
<Rolf> We too. We had to write our own progrect environment to load and store
+projects, and to administrate users
<tmu> Yes! A rewrite using QS made the whole system behave a lot better
<Baz> Rolf: you use large teams? There are ionly 3 of us - so we use ad hoc
+techniques
<tmu> Evereybody loves his/her image the most. How do you bring all the
+efforts together?
<Rolf> No large teams, but Smalltalk is difficult to use for even us 4 users
+if they are to work together
<Baz> basically our boss imposes his image on us. I have to re-tailor it each
+time I collect it off him.
<Rolf> the first thing to do is to collect ones work in small packages
<Rolf> Which can be filed out and filed in
<Rolf> without damaging the system
<tmu> With all objects created?
<Rolf> It's a good thing to start with classes and methods only
*** Portnoy has joined channel #programST
<martinb>hi portnoy
<Portnoy> Hi all
<Baz> Hi Portnoy
<Rolf> hi portnoy
<tmu> Hi
<Portnoy> i have only little time, but enough to announce that Version 4.1
+reached me at last
<Baz> Portnoy - thanks for your description of NESTOR
<Portnoy> baz: i'm now back from my holiday
<martinb>I'm capturing this for posting to the archives, please don't discuss
+proprietary or other info I will have to edit out later, thanx
<tmu> Will speaking too freely get us in trouble?
<martinb>not from me, I just don't want to spend the time editing stuff out
<Baz> Portnoy: I promised a description of our OODDBMS and hypertext system to
+you - I have not forgotten
<Portnoy> 4.1 makes a good impression on me, seems like all my little wishes
+were heared
<Rolf> 4.1 Parkplace Smalltalk ?
<tmu> Martin: can you please tell me the internet numerical address of the
+site where the discussiion is archived
<Baz> I *must* do some smalltalking now.
<Baz> bye
*** Signoff: Baz (Leaving)
<Portnoy> rolf: yes
<Rolf> I've heard rumours about Parkplace Smalltalk for OS/2 2.0. Any infos?
*** Signoff: Deepak (Bad link?)
<Portnoy> sorry, i have to leave too
*** Signoff: Portnoy (Portnoy)
<martinb>I just received my first issue of "The Smalltalk Report", kinda skimpy, I
+was hoping for more
<Rolf> What kind of topics do they cover?
<tmu> Rolf: One column is "the best from comp.lang.smalltalk"
<martinb>The lead article is "Implementing Peer Code Reviews in Smalltalk" -
+discusses using Envy/Developer environment...
<martinb>next, "Quality assurance issues...",...
<martinb>"The Best of comp.lang.smalltalk",
<martinb>"Smalltalk idioms: Abstract",...
<martinb>"Getting Real: Creating subclasses"...
<martinb>"Lab Report: ST research at Univ of Fla."...
<martinb>product announcements & "Highlights", fini
<Rolf> martinb: thanks, doesn't seem too interesting to me
<martinb>28 pages including coves and ads
<Rolf> what price
<martinb>this was the july/aug issue, hopefully suffering the summer blahs
*** tmu has changed the topic on channel #programST to Discussing Smalltalk
+related topics
<Rolf> tmu can you mail me your QC for SortedCollection? Might work for
+Smalltalk/V PM as will
<tmu> Rolf: yes
<martinb><$70/yr 6 or 8(?) issues
<martinb>editors are John Pugh and Paul White
<Rolf> The same people from the JOOPS ?
<martinb>including ? "Carleton University & The Object People"
<martinb>a SIGS Publications product
<Rolf> The Envy/Developer environment - should i know that ?
<Rolf> I'm always looking for development systems - if only to improve our own
<tmu> Rold I have just created an app which also includes a better version of
+"includes:" using a binary method
<martinb>probably, seems to be the leading (only ?) tool for ST that provides
+facilities for the development and maintenance of large software systems in
+ST
<Rolf> tmu: works for all Collections ?
<martinb>provides...
<Rolf> martinb: Can you mail me any stuff about that, or give an address to
+get some paper about it?
<tmu> Rolf: only SortedCollection have enough structure that can be exploited
<martinb>versioning, configuration, and release management capabilities, mechanisms
+for coordinating and integrating development activities of multiple
+developers
<martinb>rolf, what's your email addr
<Rolf> [e-mail]
<tmu> rolf: you should get mail in a minute...
<tmu> rolf: tell me if it worked for ST/PM
<Rolf> Thanks. I'm new in networking. Hope my configuration will receive it!
<tmu> Rolf: if you can receive mail...
<martinb>also, along the same lines is "AM/ST" from Coopers&Lybrand/ ImageSoft, who
+can be reached at 1-800-245-8840 or 516-767-9067, or mcdhup!image!info
<Rolf> tmu: The basic collections of all Smalltalk/V dialects are rather
+similar. I think it should work
<tmu> Rolf: all similar "hacked"?-)
<Rolf> of course!
<Rolf> martinb: what is mcdhup!...? Email address?
<martinb>yep a uucp email addr
<tmu> Anybody else interested in binary add and include for SortedCollections
+in ST/V xxx? I have the code ready to send
<martinb>have you uploaded it to the archives?
<martinb>Rolf here is the ENVY?Developer info that I have...
<Rolf> martinb: Thanks. Do you know any archive that might contain fixes of
+Smalltalk/V PM on OS/2 2.0?
<martinb>contact Object Technology International, 1785 Woodward Drive, Ottawa,
+Ontario, Canada, K2C 0P9 or at 613-228-3535
<tmu> Today, I have removed a bug from our system, which could well be another
+candidate for "the most frequent ST slips". Want to hear details?
<martinb>the only archives I know of are manchester and uiuc
<tmu> Rolf: conatct the Digitalk forum on Compu$erve, they have the latest
+patches ready for downloading (if you can afford our telecom service.....)
<Rolf> I don't have a compuserve access, sorry. Is Digitalk present anywhere
+on news?
<martinb>Digitalk currently supports their products through their "Direct Connect"
+and their forum on CompuServe
<martinb>DT doesn't have an IP at this time
<Rolf> That's both not for free, I think, not even if I want to post a bug
+fix!
<tmu> Rolf: no, but you can have Dan Goldman's mail address. Reachable thru
+Internet. But he won't forward you the files I think
<martinb>I'm not sure if they still offer support through BIX
<Rolf> tmu: What is that address?
<Rolf> martinb: what is BIX, and how to access it?
<tmu> martin: Can you please give me the internet adress of the irc-archive
+site (numerical!)?
<martinb>Rolf what I can do is do a catalog of all the DT files and post it to the
+archive, how you get them is another matter, cause it's gonna cost someone to
+get them
<martinb>checking...
<Rolf> It would be even great to know, what's there, thanks
<martinb>I don't have the numerics, but the manchester site is: cs.man.ac.uk and the
+u.s. site is st.cs.uiuc.edu (128.174.241.10 ?)
<martinb>BIX is the Byte magazine Byte Information Exchange
<martinb>( McGraw Hill publications)
<Rolf> martinb: BIX: How to access?
*** tonyKwong has joined channel #programST
<Rolf> internet or telekom?
*** Mode change "+o tonyKwong " on channel #programST by ucsu.colorado.EDU
<tmu> martin: what does (128.174.241.10 ?) mean? Is it complete? I did not
+find the irc script at manchester, BTW.
<martinb>lets see... it uses tymnet to access if I recall correctly, basically, BIX
+is for members only, though anyone can join, pick up a Byte magazine to get
+details
<Rolf> OK, I think by bookshop has the Byte magazine
<martinb>tmu: that a numerical site address, i.e. ftp 128.174.241.10 which is the
+"real" way to access ...
<martinb>using ftp st.cs.uiuc.edu gets translated to the numerical
<tmu> Where are all the Smalltalkers? Wasn't 10.00 PDT agood time for
+everybody?
<tmu> Martin: I thought there was a digit mis
<martinb>I have a feeling that the morning hours are not too good for U.S.
+participants
<tonyKwong> hello, just came back from lunch, it's ~1:30pm on the east coast
+of the US
<martinb>tmu, it's very possible the munber is wromg
<martinb>Tony, do you have the st archive site addresses (numerically)?
<tmu> I can give it a try.
<tonyKwong> will look
<tonyKwong> st.cs.uiuc.edu is 128.174.241.10
<martinb>the first st-irc meeting was held in the evening, u.s. time, and
+participation was better
<martinb>thanx tony
<martinb>maybe there should be 2 conferences a month one for Europeans and one for
+Americans (north south whatever ;)  )
<martinb>If we could get better participation we might be able to induce industry
+folks to attend to answers questions about there product etc.
<martinb>er, their product
<Rolf> Great idea
<tmu> Maybe one should make a mailing-list where everybody can subscribe who
+wants to know about the next event, topics, etc
<martinb>right now we haven't reached "critical mass"
<martinb>I post all relevant info to comp.lang.smalltalk
<tmu> I have heard about irc sessions with all the glamorous icons of
+Smalltalk: Adele Goldberg, and, and
<Rolf> Perhaps, Europe has'nt a large Smalltalk community
<martinb>I post trnacripts of thes confs to the u.s. st site, which should get
+mirrored to manchester
<tmu> It is sometimes hard to follow all threads in comp.lang.smalltalk
<martinb>yes Adele and a v.p. showed up at the first conference
<tmu> Can you give the exact path and name of the file. It sometiomes takes a
+few minutes to change directories
<martinb>the site is now moderated and all uploads initially go into a tmp directory
+and then is moved to the "irc" directory by the moderators, probably
+something like /pub/irc/
<Rolf> tmu: is Smalltalk/V Windows now a robust product? I tested 1.0 and 1.1
+and they didn't work for more than 10 minutes at my system
<tmu> Rolf: 2.0 makes a good impression, but with all those new features,
+there surely will be some surprises left. Most of the UAE were created by
+Windows 3.0 which behaves much better now.
<Rolf> tmu: you're running Windows 3.0 or 3.1?
<tmu> I have 2.0 in one window at the moment switching constantly between this
+and the irc window. If it crashes I wont have time to say goodby!-)
<martinb>2.0 in a window ??
<tmu> I would like to tell you about the bug I recently removed as a warning,
+because it ould be a common failure.
<martinb>please do
<tmu> ST/V Windows 2.0 (not ParcPlace)
<tmu> I use to have some collections of objects which I handle as Dictionaries
+with the objects name as the key and the object itself as the value. This
+sounds a bit redundant, but redundancy is sometimes necessary fro performance
+reasons.
<tmu> Well, I am leaving th OO paradigm with this method
<tmu> So: I could not rely on object identity when renaming objects. The
+objects WERE renamed but not the KEY!
<tmu> This produced links where the nodes which were linked could not be
+referenced anymore, making the structured object unable to display itself
+properly in the editor.
<Rolf> tmu: Can't you use symbols as names?
<tmu> So I had to enrich the renaming procedure by also removing the object
+under its old key and readding it under its new name, which is more like
+tuple oriented database hacking - not object oriented. I will rethink my
+usage of Dictionaries!
*** karl_m has joined channel #programST
<karl_m> hi all
<Rolf> tmu: Or make a subclass of String, which reacts on #== by returning the
+result of #=?
<tmu> Symbols as names? I recently posted a long article concerning the usage
+of symbols and how system performance was degrading significantly. Just take
+a look at how many message sends are involved in referncing symbols, not to
+say adding symbols.
<martinb>hi karl, do your program in Smalltalk?
<tmu> Not a problem with 200 symbols but with 2000 it gets hairy.
<karl_m> ahh - now IC - i thought ST stood for atari ST - ohh well never mind
+:)
<karl_m> i program all right but in 'C',6502,8086,i860,88k,68k etc
*** martinb has changed the topic on channel #programST to programming in the
+Smalltalk language
*** Bad Craziness (from toaster.sfsu.edu)
*** Bad Craziness (from dreamtime.unm.edu)
<tmu> Rolf: you dont mean to do something like "become:"?
<karl_m> thanx martin :)
<karl_m> anyway see ya all l8r
*** karl_m has left channel #programST
<martinb>bye :)
<tmu> I had already set the topic to something unambigious..
<tmu> But this is better!
<martinb>apparently not ;)
<Rolf> tmu: No. What's needed seems to be a 'String' class where the objects
+are #== if they contain the same characters
<martinb>happens at every conf
<tmu> Rolf: that will not help, because there are TWO representations of ONE
+object, the Dictionary's KEY (only the objects name) and the object itself,
+the VALUE. So you always have to maintain at two locations. A solution would
+be a new kind of
<martinb>== is equivalence (same object) so wouldn't == check pointers? (sorry novice
+question)
<tmu> dictionary with a synchronized KEY-VALUE association and an appropriate
+rename method
<tmu> You dont want to force ALL objects in the global image to change a
+string XX they point at toi reference a new string, say YY
<Rolf> tmu: Sorry, I misunderstood your problem.
<tmu> Rolf: so you have luckily not come across this problem.
<Rolf> martinb: == is same object, but you may overwrite it
<tmu> We are using up to 10.000 objects with 6.000 links (which are themselves
+quite complex "first-class" objects, not only instance variables pointing to
+neighbours)
<Rolf> tmu: what about creating a new key, which is not a byte object but
+contains a byte object
<Rolf> tmu: the object would return the key object, and the key would also be
+the 'key object'
<Rolf> tmu: Changing the key, however, would not exchange the key object, but
+only the byte object which is the contents of the key object
*** Signoff: tonyKwong (ccwf.cc.utexas.edu penfold.ece.uiuc.edu)
<tmu> Then I loose the performance advantages which are the reason for this
+redundant representation, you could then as well take the objects as keys AND
+values, which is the same as using the least structured collection: a set
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*** Mode change "+o tonyKwong " on channel #programST by penfold.ece.uiuc.edu
<Rolf> tmu: Even if you store and access the new key objects only?
<Rolf> tmu: The key objects are still unique objects!
<tmu> The problem lies in another design flaw of Smalltalk. Most interface
+objects like meus or lists force you to convert objects to strings (for
+display) and vice versae after you had your choice. Wth the string returned
+you have to look up the
<tmu> corresponding objects
<Rolf> tmu: I had a similar problem with listpanes
<Rolf> tmu: I had a list of objects , generated a list of strings to display
+them.
<tmu> I have posted some goodies: ObjectListPanes and ObjectMenus which work
+with REAL objects and a block to tell the list/menu how the objects have to
+be displayed. But you get real objects when you click on them.
<Rolf> After that, however, I didn't search the list of objects for the
+selected one, but took the selection index! to access it
<tmu> That sounds similar to the problem I had: You cant rely on object
+identity, one of the MAIN characteristics of OO technology!
<Rolf> :-) My version of ObjectListPane is called NewListPane
<Rolf> funny to see different people solving the same problem in a similar way
<tmu> There are similar problems
<Rolf> There's another kind of pane if would propose to consider
<tmu> The good thing with OO lists and meus is that you can use identical
+item-displays with different objects "behind" them. With the common method
+you scanned your collection via "detect:" and always got the first occurence
+of a corresponding objec
<Rolf> rather often I needed a kind of list pane that didn't show only one
+selection, but, independently from the main selection, a group selection
<tmu> Not only a MultipleChoiceList?
<martinb>(multiple selecte list pane ?)
<Rolf> Think of lists of files or other things. There is one file you want to
+see or to open, but there may be some files to delete or copy at a time
<Rolf> Not quite
<Rolf> A normal multiple select list pane has only one kind of selection
<Rolf> you may select more than one item, but all of them are equally selected
<Rolf> What I needed, was a pane with two different kinds of selection: a
+group selection and a single selection which would be represented in a
+different way
<martinb>at the same time or as alternates?
<Rolf> After I created such a window for my project environment, I found it
+quite usefull for other applications.
<Rolf> At the same time
<tmu> How did you manage not to make the procedure at the interface too
+cumbersome?
<Rolf> to give an example:
<Rolf> You may select a class in my ClassHierarchyBrowser quite normally. The
+methods of this class will be shown as usual
<Rolf> If you hold the shift key, you may select a number of classes. The CHB
+doesn't display the methods of these classes, but you may (e.g. from a menu)
+decide to print, file out or remove them while you're inspecting the methods
+of your maPRIVMSG #programst :No
<Rolf> The point is, that sometimes you have rather different actions on the
+same class of objects
<Rolf> actions, which are usefull for a group of objects
*** smith has joined channel #programST
<Rolf> and actions which are usefull for a single object.
<martinb>welcome smith
<smith> Thanks
<tmu> Rolf: I would consider this procedure ok for developers but I doubt that
+this will be a consistent approach for the design of "normal" user interfaces
+- at least it is not CUA!-)
<Rolf> inspecting the methods of a class is an action that needs the user to
+look at the CHB and the CHB time to show the methods
<tmu> Hello smith
<Rolf> When I want to print some classes I don't want the CHB to show me the
+methods of each class when it select it for printing
<Rolf> That's why I use 2 differnt kinds of selection
<Rolf> tmu: No, its no CUA
<Rolf> But the people at my group got rather fast accustomed to it
*** Signoff: smith (Ping timeout)
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<tmu> If somebody is interested in beta-testing  our current implementation of
+a "text interpretation support system", you can send a mail to
[e-mail]. The system is written in Smalltalk/V 286, needs a 386
+PC with at least! 4MB and a
<tmu> VGA card. A geman and english version (with manual) are available.
<tmu> Dreaded writing bugs!
<martinb>:)
<Rolf> Could that be interesting for people doing anglistics or germanistiks
+or something like that ?
<tmu> We already have it tested by people from the social sciences,
+linguistics, knowledge aquisition
<tmu> literature science, theology, tec. All areas where TEXT is the central
+material and has to be interpreted.
<tmu> But: the program does not interpret anything, it only offers tools for
+the researcher.
<Rolf> tmu: if you need betatesting, I could ask a friend of mine doing
+germanistics. However, I don't know what kind of PC he's using
<tmu> There is also a theory building component (creating hypertext and
+semantic networks) with the option for converting the structures into a
+Prolog format.
<tmu> You can also create SPSS-jobs if you want to do quantitative analysis as
+well.