November 2013 - Pharo-users

Re: [Pharo-users] Building a simple UI with Spec. Problem with menus.

by btc＠openinworld.com

nacho wrote: > Hi, this is my first post in the Pharo group. > I'm developing a simple Text Editor with some nice features as a way to > understand how Spec works. It seems that Spec will be the default UI > framework from Pharo 3 onwards, I know it's changing and evolving but I'll > take the risk. > The problem I'm facing is that I'm lost at trying to add a "Save as..." > option in the menu. > It seems that Spec is still using the Morphic MenuMorph>>ToggleMenuItemMorph > but it's not clear to me hoy to add this item. > On the other hand, inspecting the ComposableModel class, it seem that in the > future this will be done directly in Spec as suggested by the > ComposableModel>>addMenuItemsToWindowMenu: > But so far that method simply says "do nothing". > Any help? > Thanks in advance > Cheers > Nacho > > Check ComposableModel subclass WindowModel. I believe #addMenuItemsToWindowMenu: is just for the Window Menu (the small downward pointing arrow in the title bar) - so it doesn't apply to other ComposableModel subclasses like ListModel, etc. cheers -ben

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by Marcus Denker

>>> I always joke that he forgot âThe only way to have a future is to finish somethingâ ;-) âOne of the sad memories of my life is a visit to the celebrated mathematician and inventor, Mr Babbage. He was far advanced in age, but his mind was still as vigorous as ever. He took me through his work-rooms. In the first room I saw parts of the original Calculating Machine, which had been shown in an incomplete state many years before and had even been put to some use. I asked him about its present form. âI have not finished it because in working at it I came on the idea of my Analytical Machine, which would do all that it was capable of doing and much more. Indeed, the idea was so much simpler that it would have taken more work to complete the Calculating Machine than to design and construct the other in its entirety, so I turned my attention to the Analytical Machine.ââ âAfter a few minutesâ talk, we went into the next work-room, where he showed and explained to me the working of the elements of the Analytical Machine. I asked if I could see it. âI have never completed it,â he said, âbecause I hit upon an idea of doing the same thing by a different and far more effective method, and this rendered it useless to proceed on the old lines.â Then we went into the third room. There lay scattered bits of mechanism, but I saw no trace of any working machine. Very cautiously I approached the subject, and received the dreaded answer, âIt is not constructed yet, but I am working on it, and it will take less time to construct it altogether than it would have token to complete the Analytical Machine from the stage in which I left it.â I took leave of the old man with a heavy heart.â â Lord Moulton (and if someone says âbut he invented the modern computer": No, he did not. We know about him because Ada Lovelance helped him publishing theoretical results (after removing lots of random ramblings about the evil state of research funding). Babagge is *irrelevant* for today. He was rediscovered later after people re-invented his computer. If he would have finished (or just made sure to delegate it, being so trivial that should have been really easy?) he truly would have changed *everything*. âSometimes you need to finish that damn trivial calculatorâ â me Marcus

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by Marcus Denker

On 03 Nov 2013, at 18:54, kilon alios <kilon.alios(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Yeah I cant say I agree with Mr Kay my answer to his quote will be that he is wrong and that "the best way to predict the future is to create a monopolyâ . Yes, in 2007, the iPhone showed that âWe can not do anything because Microsoftâ was just wrong. Marcus

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by kilon alios

Yeah I cant say I agree with Mr Kay my answer to his quote will be that he is wrong and that "the best way to predict the future is to create a monopoly" . After all Windows had and still has a very predictable future. But I can understand why he said that, and I most certainly would motivate this kind of thinking which I find it as the foundation of Smalltalk culture and why I love to use Smalltalk. Its kinda ironic that bigger (market share wise) something is the less mobile it becomes. To the rest of your reply, I cant really argue so deeply. Personally I am just a dude that does very basic things with git. As to why sourceforge lost some of its crowd to Github, for me its dead obvious that Github is a much more clean and well designed solution. I always saw sourceforge as too messy, and If sourceforge was our only alternative option then I would be pushing for improvement to Smalltalkhub. Unfortunately I am not interested into source control. I am mainly a GUI , graphics and sound / music coder. Maybe one day like you , after I have used it for much more projects, I will hate git, but so far it has worked great for my very simple needs. On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr>wrote: > > > > > Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to > > predict the future is to create it." > > > > I always joke that he forgot âThe only way to have a future is to finish > somethingâ ;-) > > Marcus > > > >

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by Yuriy Tymchuk

On 03 Nov 2013, at 18:35, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > >> >> Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to >> predict the future is to create it." >> > > I always joke that he forgot âThe only way to have a future is to finish somethingâ ;-) > > Marcus Made my day > > >

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by Marcus Denker

On 03 Nov 2013, at 18:42, James Ashley <james.ashley(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: >> >>> >>> Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to >>> predict the future is to create it." >>> >> >> I always joke that he forgot âThe only way to have a future is to finish somethingâ ;-) >> >> Marcus > > Nice. I may steal that corollary and blog about it someday. â James explanation: âsomethingâ means really that: You do not need to âreinvent everythingâ to *have* a future. You finish something (trivial, boring), and than you use that to build on top. Yes, it will be trivial. But the, in the end tragic, fact is that anything you can *do* in the sense of really making in real will be trivial. Else you could not do it. If you wait for that amazing thing that will be so great that it even amazes you yourself who made it real: Sorry, this will never happen. *Everything* you can make real will be trivial and boring by definition. âNow I know how to do itâ. Yes!, so finish, and than build on top. Marcus

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by James Ashley

On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > >> >> Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to >> predict the future is to create it." >> > > I always joke that he forgot âThe only way to have a future is to finish somethingâ ;-) > > Marcus Nice. I may steal that corollary and blog about it someday. -- James

Nov. 3, 2013

Building a simple UI with Spec. Problem with menus.

by nacho

Hi, this is my first post in the Pharo group. I'm developing a simple Text Editor with some nice features as a way to understand how Spec works. It seems that Spec will be the default UI framework from Pharo 3 onwards, I know it's changing and evolving but I'll take the risk. The problem I'm facing is that I'm lost at trying to add a "Save as..." option in the menu. It seems that Spec is still using the Morphic MenuMorph>>ToggleMenuItemMorph but it's not clear to me hoy to add this item. On the other hand, inspecting the ComposableModel class, it seem that in the future this will be done directly in Spec as suggested by the ComposableModel>>addMenuItemsToWindowMenu: But so far that method simply says "do nothing". Any help? Thanks in advance Cheers Nacho -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Building-a-simple-UI-with-Spec-Problem-with-menus-tp4… Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by Marcus Denker

> > Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to > predict the future is to create it." > I always joke that he forgot âThe only way to have a future is to finish somethingâ ;-) Marcus

Nov. 3, 2013

Re: [Pharo-users] I would rather pay for Smalltalkhub than use Github for free.

by James Ashley

I'm really just a fairly uninterested bystander who's been eavesdropping. I don't much care one way or the other, except that I'd *love* to see Pharo explode into the popularity that it deserves. On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 9:34 AM, kilon alios <kilon.alios(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Influence the way Github goes is besides the point at this point since we > dont have a better alternative and I will be a great oracle to predict , or > not, that we wont have one in the next decade. Alan Kay once said something along the lines of "The best way to predict the future is to create it." > Unless something > extraordinary happens and Pharo goes super popular. I think that may be the wrong attitude. Even if it doesn't, the best ideas will filter down to inferior languages/environments. Things like Visual Studio and Resharper are still trying to bring Smalltalk into the mainstream...though in a very limited scope. If someone creates something that's a significant improvement to github, and it's generally useful, it won't matter what technology created it. It either will supplant github or github will extend and embrace the ideas. Either way, the ecosystem improves. I could probably write a thesis about the actual economics and morality and sanity of using closed source created by a company like github vs. something like squeaksource (which I loved), but (AFAICT) the community is faced with exactly that sort of crisis. It takes time and effort to maintain and improve anything. People who are making money doing so are in a better position to make that "anything" nicer and friendlier to end-users than people who are working on it in their/our spare time. It's a sad fact of life: most of us don't get to be Richard Stallman (or maybe that's a happy fact...whatever). > Being a commercial application has not stopped tons of open source projects > porting to it. But hey what do they know. I am not sure what you mean about > sourceforge, I see still loads of open source project using it. Have you checked out sourceforge lately? It was obnoxious for years. Which is probably the main reason that so many projects have moved to github. The last time I tried to download anything from it, I had to wade through 3 pages of "Download and install this malware to do things you already can!" searching for the "Never mind, just let me download the thing I want" link that was buried in all the crap. In the end, I *still* wound up with 3 things I didn't want. I can only assume they'd have tried to auto-install if I were running Windows. I found out the next day that they'd been acquired by some new company. I intend to avoid them like the plague from now on. Github might wind up in the same boat, but I think that would require some major redesign on their part. It seems like it'd be pretty tough to insert adware into the `git clone` process. > And if Git is good enough to version control Linux source, I dont see why it > would be a big problem to Pharo. Several years back, when people were starting to realize that tools like Source Safe and SVN suck, I was involved in a long conversation sort-of along these same lines in one of the lisp communities. Everyone was looking for the next big thing in source control. At the time, Darcs looked like the thing that should win, but wouldn't. Git was too big, nasty, scary, and didn't work on Windows, so it didn't even seem to be a contender. Every option available was focused around old-school line-based diff's. Which seemed totally asinine from a lisp perspective: that was really about modifying leaves and branches in a tree. I probably got flamboyant about this at the time. Finally, someone politely suggested that I go ahead and write it myself if I thought it was such a great idea. So I tried, and it turned out to be a lot tougher than I'd expected. Most of what I learned from that experience was the basic lesson that I didn't have a clue about lisp. But the experience seems at least a little relevant here. Git seems like a horrible tool for tracking changes to a smalltalk...I dunno. I'm such an outsider and newb here that I'm not even sure about the proper terminology. Package, maybe? Whatever. Group of classes that you write and maintain that implements some sort of useful batch of functionality. At the same time...would it be worth the effort to implement something in the same realm that would be competing with an established opponent? Then again, sooner or later, *something* will come along that makes git look as obsolete as git did to CVS/SVN. > But even if it is should not be faster if > we make extensions to git via monticello to work around these potential > problems instead of doing a huge project from scratch ? FWIW, I'd vote for that sort of approach. If I had any right to a vote here. Evolution beats revolution. Then again, I've dabbled around with what that actually means (I've been trying to come up with a decent way to visualize branches in my very limited spare time), and git seems to be pretty nasty to deal with under the covers. > I think being against git is perfectly fine, wanting to trying your own > thing is awesome, focusing on pharo specific solution is of course a good > thing. But then not wanting to do that and use what is already out there can > be as wise. Git sort of arrived in the middle of a perfect storm. Everyone was feeling the pain of source control systems that truly sucked. Linus felt that pain and threw a solution together. Its victory may be another great example of the way "less beats more", or it might be a testimony to name brand inertia. Or maybe it's just that intellectuals don't understand the wisdom of the market. Be that as it may. I still get riled up enough about source control to write long rants like this one when I have better ways to spend my time. Git sucks, but so does everything else. I don't have the time to invest in making it better. I'm too busy working on problems that I consider more interesting. I suspect this is the simple reality of what's going on here. If someone *does* care enough about the ecosystem to truly invest in a VCS that makes more sense than git, well, power to you. In the meantime, it seems like building beautiful and intuitive UI's on top of github's existing architecture would be more productive. Hmm. Now there's an idea to explore. Going back into lurk mode. Respectfully, James

Nov. 3, 2013