September 2015 - Pharo-users

Exploring Pier
by Jimmie Houchin Oct. 14, 2015

Oct. 14, 2015

Hello, I am interested in learning to use Pier. I browsed the mailing list to learn about current status and documentation. It seems to be pretty quiet on the mailing lists. There seems to be some activity on Smalltalkhub on Pier3. I am interested to see how well supported Pier is (is going to be). And if Pier is still active in the community. Is there any current documentation and where? Thanks for any help and opinions regarding Pier and its current and future situation. Jimmie

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A keyboard controlled code editor, how difficult would that be?
by Stephan Eggermont Oct. 5, 2015

Oct. 5, 2015

When experienced (non-smalltalk) developers come to Pharo, they often complain about the (perceived) lack of keyboard control. Spotter has made it easy to open new browsers and inspectors, but navigating between all the open windows is still mostly done with the mouse. What would happen if we create an state-full interface, showing code as cards, and explicitly switch between navigating and editing? https://vimeo.com/139960287 Drag some methods to the code panel, click on it and start editing. Esc switches between navigation and editing, when navigating switches enter between the collapsed and expanded view of a card. The arrow keys select other cards, and using shift a card can be moved. How much code do we need for that? Well, the prototype fits in 6 columns on an UHD screen. Gofer it smalltalkhubUser: 'StephanEggermont' project: 'Documentation'; configurationOf: 'NewUI'; load. CodePanel new openInWindowLabeled: 'CodePanel' What needs fixing: navigating over empty columns. Stephan

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Morph: event handler on wrong morph/submorph
by Federico.Balaguer Oct. 5, 2015

Oct. 5, 2015

Hello, I found a problem with BotArena (http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~FedericoBalaguer/BotArena) on Pharo 4. BotArena is an interactive robot simulation environment that we use in my university to teach OOP basics. BotArena was developed as an instantiation of BOSS (http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~CAR/BOSS/) BotArena (as well as BOSS) has a window (Morph) that has three buttons and a grid view that is subclass of BorderedMorph. The GridView can handle RedButtons, a click on the grid adds a new robot to the simulation. The problem that raised on Pharo4 is that, after a RedButton event, any event (focus to another pharo window or clicking on one of the buttons of BotArena) will be handled by the GridView. It seems like the GridView retains the focus after the (first) RedButton event was handled. Could someone help me to sort this one out? Thanks! Federico -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Morph-event-handler-on-wrong-morph-submorph-tp4852370… Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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Pillar for 30 gone the way of the dodo on the CI
by phil＠highoctane.be Oct. 4, 2015

Oct. 4, 2015

Hello, It may have been a long time without it but still... I ran the doc job on my CI and got this that wasn't working: https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/job/Pillar/PHARO=30,VERSION=stable,V… Hum, yes, but ... why remove the doc tools as this is quite an important thing to keep around for all Pharo versions? I'll go to 4.0 but there are other dependencies etc for the OS maybe etc. Not good as I need to migrate these things for my customer as well. Phil

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NeoCSV and special handling for some columns
by Nicolai Hess Oct. 3, 2015

Oct. 3, 2015

Hi, I have two problems I could not solve: 1. I would like to read only some columns: I have a large file with ~30 colums, but I am only interested on ~5 columns (not that important, I could pre-process the file) but anyway it would be nice to do it in smalltalk. 2. some columns will contain only strings (quoted values) and some only numbers, but the field may be empty, is it possible to define the default "emptyValue" as an - empty string for empty fields in the "string column" - 0 for empty fields in the "number column"? thanks in advance nicolai

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Accessors vs instance variables
by Lyn Headley Oct. 3, 2015

Oct. 3, 2015

Hello, As I understand it, in Smalltalk, the instance variables of a class C are "protected" - able to be referenced by methods of C or its subclasses, but not by other objects. This is a useful feature as it clearly points out which pieces of data are not available to other objects, and thereby simplifies code. However, I am often unsure of whether to use this feature or not, as it conflicts in my mind with the practice of using accessor methods. I like accessor methods because they make it easy to change behavior later -- If I have a dozen calls to an accessor method, then I only need to change it in one place. If these were instance variable references, I would have to do more work. The disadvantage of accessor methods is that they obscure the protected status of data -- it becomes unclear how protected an instance variable is meant to be. (Accessors also make it harder for me to find users of the data when browsing, when there are senders from totally unrelated classes, although I suspect I have just not figured out how to browse scoped in the right way for this). It occurs to me that a tool could be (easily?) developed that would solve this problem. It would take existing variable references and turn them into calls to accessor methods. That way, I could have protection when I want it, and easy ability to change code as well. Does something like this exist, or is it feasible to build? How do others think about this issue? -Lyn

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Rubric events
by Miguel Campusano Oct. 2, 2015

Oct. 2, 2015

Hello, I'm working on modifying the styling of text by using RubTextSegmentMorph. The problem is that the text could be modified dynamically by selecting another text, so the styling must be modified. I want to use the announcements system of Rubric but something weird happens. When I subscribe to the announce RubTextUpdatedInModel of the RubScrolledTextMorph, the styling sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. What I noticed in the method RubScrolledTextMorph>>whenTextUpdatedInModel: the announcement is done before setting the text in the morph and if I change this to make the announcement after setting the text, everything works fine. So my question is: Is there something special to announcer the set of the text before actually setting it? Is it ok to change it? OR Is another way to do what I want to do? Bests, Miguel

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Code completion in comment pane and Pillar
by Peter Uhnak Sept. 30, 2015

Sept. 30, 2015

Hi, Some time ago I ran into a problem with typing left brackets into comment pane. As you know, code blocks in Pillar are marked with [[[ However comment pane is subject to regular code completion of NECController, which means that every time I type '[' NEC converts it into '[ ]'. So if I type '[[[' then I get '[ [ [ ] ] ]'. Which is good in code, but not here. Now considering we are pushing for Pillar in comments I think this should be resolved. However I don't know how. a) disable code completion for comments (trivial, but loosing CC b) subclass NECController to disable this. This is probably lot more complex, because the current one is hard-wired via Smalltalk tools c) add configuration option to NECControler so it can run in different modes (still a lot of work) d) add setting to options to disable/enable CC in comments and let users decide. d) other better, faster, easier solution? >From future perspective b) could be used to provide more extensive code completion, specifically for Pillar. Thanks, Peter

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Pharo - database without database
by Adam Sept. 30, 2015

Sept. 30, 2015

Hello, I was wondering if it is possible for Pharo to load lots of data and query them without using external DB, just using object memory. Well, someting like GemStone/S, but not so sophisticated. I did some research so here is details what I found. I would appreciate if someone can tell me if any points of this agenda can be allready done or need to be programmed, or if this whole idea is waste of time and it is better to use external DB. 1) Object memory limit: Current object memory of Pharo is limited to 4GB. Free version of GemStone/S is also limited to 4GB, so I would rather stick with Pharo until I reach this level. And in the future this limit grow due to 64bit version of VM. 2) Saving to disk: Is it possible to save object or group of objects to disk and ensure consistency? With some transaction mechanism and transaction log? 3) RAM limit: Is it possible to delete objects from memory, move them to the disk and not break its connections to other objects? For example by redirecting object internal ID to some kind of hollow object, that will renew receiver of message from disk if necessary... This approach can also possibly split object memory into more "remote" sources. 4) Indexing: What optimalization for searching current collections in Pharo do? For example: how to store instances of City if I would like to search through it by name and also by its postal code? Is there some library for creating fulltext search (maybe Spotter uses that - I did not study it yet). Have a nice day, and thanks for any answer. Adam

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Pharo 5 update of Grafeo
by Stephan Eggermont Sept. 30, 2015

Sept. 30, 2015

Grafeo is a nice Morphic graph editing toolkit by Eiichiro Ito. It forms the basis for Fluo. https://vimeo.com/80749341 I've updated it for Pharo 5. I had to copy it to StephanEggermont/Documentation, as oohito/Fluo is not writable. Stephan Name: Grafeo-StephanEggermont.64 Author: StephanEggermont Time: 30 September 2015, 9:51:53.670434 am UUID: 5dc871e7-c1ea-4098-95c2-6c5741548ecb Ancestors: Grafeo-EiichiroIto.63 Changes for Pharo 5.0 Replaced deprecated menu methods Fixed one error message

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