September 2019 - Pharo-users

Re: [Pharo-users] Workflows and possible usages

by Tim Mackinnon

If this does become of interest to anyone, I had a quick look at the workflow landscape in Pharo and found it rather unfathomable - Netsyle seems very comprehensive but complicated and lacking syntactic sugar to make it easy to just pick up and run with. Itâs reified up the hilt, so simple stuff seems to need lots of code, which the examples emphasise. NewWave has a great readme.md, so quickly got some initial concepts but itâs very work in progress and key base classes have no documentation so itâs not easy to understand what does what for more detailed things (Sebastijan did respond quickly to some questions, so hope to see it continue to improve). It looked promising but it seems to want to âown the flowâ and run everything, so my Teapot endpoints couldnât easily get the next workflow from the engine - the engine wanted to push things to me (I messed with a semaphore to try and sync things, but decided itâs ethos was just different - I think the netstyle engine would let me pull, but didnât get that far with it). There was a gemstone workflow engine - itâs not ported, it looked interesting but used a Windows bpml tool and again wasnât sure if it wanted to own the world, and porting it would be more than I wanted to do. After an hour, I went with my own domain model and some condition blocks to just get something going. Teapot and NeoJsonWriter really let you prototype quickly! Had something in 15 mins to let me mull over the problem. Tim Sent from my iPhone > On 26 Sep 2019, at 09:12, Tim Mackinnon <tim(a)testit.works> wrote: > > Hi everyone, in my day job I encountered an interesting domain problem that a previous java team has made a bit of a hash of ... > > I thought it might be interesting to model it in Pharo to help explain it better to a new team and I was interested in community thoughts as we have some of the best thinkers on tap. > > The scenario is that a user is presented with several input fields to apply for a loan , one of them is Amount and another the type of loan (cash, invoice, machinery etc). > > Depending on these answers, they are next presented with different questions - if the amount > 100k there are some high value questions, if the loan type is machinery there are some more additional questions on the type of machine etc. This progresses to a third form and potentially a 4th and 5th. > > So itâs effectively a decision tree, that rules out different loan types. > > The UI is a React web form, and Iâve suggested to the team to do some experiments with a dynamic UI that interprets a Json payload that describes the questions, so itâs really about how to model the questions and then render them out in this Json format. > > I was wondering if this was a typical workflow problem (and whether the netstyle engine was appropriate or wasnât there some other ones announced recently too?) > > Iâve never used a workflow engine - But it sounds a bit like the problem above? Or not? > > Alternatively, I was thinking I could model groups of questions into a Decision, and then have a DecisionJourney of Decisions. Each decision could have some match and dependency criteria - e.g. some sort of matcher block eg [:d | d amount > 100 & d type = #machinery] and then some method to add questions to a DecisionForm on a match which would then render the Json payload. > > But I wondered if workflow engines just do this, and they might handle extra stuff for free. > > Anyone have any thoughts or directions to explore? > > Tim > > Sent from my iPhone >

Sept. 27, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] Microsoft COM

by eftomi

Hi, > Do you have any use case in mind to start working on? As a professor at business school I have various use cases, like developing business web applications where you cannot do anything without DB access (e. g. Oracle, SQL Server), where COM & ADO could be used. Besides, I could present to the students various cases of middleware connectivity & integration, up to the REST API, along with the COM(+). I'm interested also in workflow/business processes that another Pharo group is working on, but that's a different story :-) And this would go together with the display of a true OO language and dev environment. As a researcher I'm using tools to grab, process, analyze and save the data in various forms and tools, where Pharo could be the middle man - the orchestrator. To do that on the most powerful level in Windows you need COM. To cut it short, my needs are not really complicated, since I need COM only to "command" other applications and to get some basic/elementary data back. For that, as I see, the PharoCOM prototype just needs additional data types (at least the most used ones) to properly marshall the property and method calls and arguments. Today I studied the world of VT_VARIANTs, VT_BYREFs, VT_BSTRs and other strange types in COM world :-) If anybody has a good e-book on this I'd be most grateful :-) >From all the responses today I see that our desires go further, like: - a possibility to generate wrapper classes as interfaces to outside servers (Vince, Esteban M.) - expose Pharo objects as COM objects (Pablo) - OLE/COM implementation on a real case (Cris) Pablo, I hope that these explanations are interesting to you. If we are going to develop the functionalities together, then you have to give me/us some directions and rules (github etc). And, patience please, Smalltalk is my like tenth language, and I'm just starting more seriously with it :-) For the development, is it preferable to use Pharo 8? Best wishes, Tomaz -- Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html

Sept. 26, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] [Pharo-dev] [ANN] Pharo TechTalk Sept 26

by Steve Quezadas

can you post the meeting in UTC time? It's easier to coordinate across the globe in UTC time On Thu, Sep 26, 2019 at 5:24 AM Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm(a)gmail.com> wrote: > It is my fault :) > Iâm sorry, but my week is being complicated and sadly I didnât manage to > clean up the mess :( > > Anyway, next slot I promise it will be done! > > Esteban > > > > On 26 Sep 2019, at 14:13, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > > > > > > > > Sadly we have to cancel the TechTalk that was planned for today the last > minute. > > > > It will be done (most likely) at the next TechTalk slot (Oct 17). > > > > We are sorry for the late change. > > > > I will send an new invitation for the next techtalk slot next week > > > > > > > >> On 18 Sep 2019, at 15:45, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > >> > >> A regular chat about Pharo. Happens on Discord. > >> > >> The Tech talks are open to both members and non-members! > >> > >> Topic: Spec2 and GTK > >> > >> > >> NOTE: one week later then originally planned! > >> > >> > >> https://association.pharo.org/event-3419544 > >> > >> > >> > > > > > > >

Sept. 26, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] Microsoft COM

by Christopher Fuhrman

On Thu, 26 Sep 2019 at 05:18, tesonep(a)gmail.com <tesonep(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Do you have any use case in mind to start working on? > I can suggest something I did in the past (it's the idea behind PlantUML Gizmo). With Roassal, we can generate visualizations (PNG?) that go into a Word document. The source (which is a kind of DSL to produce an image, like PlantUML) can be in a playground. The problem is when you insert the image into word, you can't re-do it unless you have the source, which is in some Pharo image or Git repository... it's nicer to be able to keep the source inside your documentation (Word). So, a use-case would be to automate (with COM) the insertion of the visualization (a morph in the form of a GIF or PNG?) into the currently-open Word document. The Roassal source (DSL, from the playground) would be attached to the image as ALT_TEXT. That way, you could recover the source into Pharo later if/when you want to modify it after it's in your Word document. There would be a complementary function to recover the "selected" image/source from word back into Pharo. This is a rough description I know. I have made a plugin for Word (VSTO, VB.net) that does this using PlantUML.com and it works quite well. But you could easily imagine Pharo/Roassal as the DSL + image generator (it's a little more complex). Maybe not the most interesting use case, but it's something to test out the COM library. The source of the method to replace/insert an image in VB.NET I wrote is here [1] (the context is VSTO, so it's surely different in COM, but it might be useful to someone). Cris [1]: https://github.com/fuhrmanator/plantuml-word-add-in-vsto/blob/6f917e94779a1… > > Thanks, > Pablo > > On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 10:29 PM eftomi <tomaz.turk(a)ef.uni-lj.si> wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > I finally got some time to check Pablo's PharoCOM package closely. At > first > > I had problems with simple things, like making Word visible with > > properyNamed:put: (it's frustrating when you see the app on the processes > > list but you cannot control it :-)) but then I found the reason - it was > a > > tiny detail in Win32VariantBool>>#write:to:, and then - voila! > > > > Here's an example of opening Word for Windows, adding a blank document, > > typing some text and getting this text back to Pharo: > > > > Ole32Lib uniqueInstance initLibrary. > > wrd := COMDispatchInstance createInstanceByName: 'Word.Application'. > > wrd propertyNamed: 'Visible' put: true. > > > > docs := wrd propertyNamed: 'Documents'. > > docs dispatch: 'Add'. > > > > sel := wrd propertyNamed: 'Selection'. > > sel dispatch: 'TypeText' withArguments: {'Hello from Pharo!'}. > > > > sel dispatch: 'WholeStory' . > > Transcript show: (sel propertyNamed: 'Text'); cr. > > > > Another example is with Active Data Objects to get DB access: > > > > conn := COMDispatchInstance createInstanceByName: 'ADODB.Connection' . > > conn dispatch: 'Open' withArguments: { 'DSN=this; Uid=that; > Pwd=theOther;' } > > . > > conn propertyNamed: 'State' . --> true! > > rst := (COMDispatchInstance createInstanceByName: 'ADODB.Recordset') . > > rst dispatch: 'Open' withArguments: { 'SomeTableName' . conn . 3 . 1 }. > > > > The last line raises an exception because not all of the data types that > > functions are reporting are implemented yet, as Pablo mentioned in his > post. > > > > The package is really nicely prepared. The most impressive is it's > > reflective capability. My "proof of concept" work with DispHelper library > > that I mentioned in another forum topic was successful (I can get to the > SQL > > Server :-)), however it's a dead-end regarding the reflection. > > > > I'm very interested in COM implementation since I found Pharo to be very > > useful as a tool, and since I work in "windowed" environment the COM > > interaction is crucial to me. I decided to spent my free evenings > working on > > the project finalization. I'm not sure of how long will it take though > :-) > > Pablo, I hope that I can count on your help regarding the questions about > > the overall architecture that you set. > > > > Is anybody else interested in this? Maybe we can join our efforts. > > > > Best wishes, > > Tomaz > > > > > > > > -- > > Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html > > > > > -- > Pablo Tesone. > tesonep(a)gmail.com > > -- Christopher Fuhrman, P.Eng., PhD *Professeur au DÃ©partement de gÃ©nie logiciel et des technologies de l'informationÃTS (Ãcole de technologie supÃ©rieure)* http://profs.etsmtl.ca/cfuhrman +1 514 396 8638 *L'ÃTS est une constituante de l'UniversitÃ© du QuÃ©bec*

Sept. 26, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] [Pharo-dev] [ANN] New Windows VM - Fixes 1903 error

by Serge Stinckwich

Yes this what I want to know. How to know there is an update, without downloading the update ? On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 10:26 PM Richard O'Keefe <raoknz(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I understood Serge Stinkwich's question to be "at any given time, how do > we know whether > the VM we have is the latest one for our platform?" Certainly that was > what I wanted to > know. When I use the Launcher, I don't see any way to ask "is this VM > I've selected up- > to-date". If I click on Update, the Launcher starts an HTTP request or > not, and after > enough time to make me think it is downloading quite a lot, just stops. > If I repeat the > action, the whole process repeats. This makes me think that the Launcher > is not looking > to see whether there is a new version, just downloading whatever is latest > at the other > end. > > It would be nice to have an "is this image/VM up todate?" button > somewhere, that just > gets a few bytes of version number + checksum. > > On Sat, 21 Sep 2019 at 01:40, Pablo Tesone <tesonep(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hi Serge, >> >> in any Pharo Image (7 or 8) in the Option System / System Reporter >> >> There should be something like: >> >> >> Cheers, >> >> Pablo >> >> >> On 20/09/2019 13:24, Serge Stinckwich wrote: >> >> >> >> On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 11:07 AM tesonep(a)gmail.com <tesonep(a)gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Hello, >>> a new stable VM has been deployed. This VM uses a new version of >>> libSSH allowing us to work in the latest Windows version. >>> >>> It can be directly updated using Pharo Launcher or downloaded using >>> ZeroConf scripts. >>> >>> To update from Pharo Launcher you have to access to the VM Manager >>> window. >>> Just click on the marked button and then in "Update" >>> [image: updateVM.png] >>> >>> >> This great Pablo, I didn't know that there is a VM manager. >> I want to save my bandwidth. >> How do we know, we have the last VM ? >> >> >> -- >> Serge Stinckwic >> h >> >> Int. Research Unit >> on Modelling/Simulation of Complex Systems (UMMISCO) >> Sorbonne University >> (SU) >> French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) >> U >> niversity of YaoundÃ© I, Cameroon >> "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for >> machines to execute." >> https://twitter.com/SergeStinckwich >> >> -- Serge Stinckwic âhâ Int. Research Unit on Modelling/Simulation of Complex Systems (UMMISCO) âSorbonne University (SU) French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD)â U âniversity of YaoundÃ© Iâ, Cameroon "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." https://twitter.com/SergeStinckwich â

Sept. 26, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] [Pharo-dev] [ANN] Pharo TechTalk Sept 26

by Esteban Lorenzano

It is my fault :) Iâm sorry, but my week is being complicated and sadly I didnât manage to clean up the mess :( Anyway, next slot I promise it will be done! Esteban > On 26 Sep 2019, at 14:13, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > > > > Sadly we have to cancel the TechTalk that was planned for today the last minute. > > It will be done (most likely) at the next TechTalk slot (Oct 17). > > We are sorry for the late change. > > I will send an new invitation for the next techtalk slot next week > > > >> On 18 Sep 2019, at 15:45, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: >> >> A regular chat about Pharo. Happens on Discord. >> >> The Tech talks are open to both members and non-members! >> >> Topic: Spec2 and GTK >> >> >> NOTE: one week later then originally planned! >> >> >> https://association.pharo.org/event-3419544 >> >> >> > >

Sept. 26, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] [ANN] Pharo TechTalk Sept 26

by Marcus Denker

Sadly we have to cancel the TechTalk that was planned for today the last minute. It will be done (most likely) at the next TechTalk slot (Oct 17). We are sorry for the late change. I will send an new invitation for the next techtalk slot next week > On 18 Sep 2019, at 15:45, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker(a)inria.fr> wrote: > > A regular chat about Pharo. Happens on Discord. > > The Tech talks are open to both members and non-members! > > Topic: Spec2 and GTK > > > NOTE: one week later then originally planned! > > > https://association.pharo.org/event-3419544 > > >

Sept. 26, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] Microsoft COM

by Esteban Maringolo

On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 8:35 PM Vince Refiti < vince.refiti(a)trapezegroup.com.au> wrote: > Have you checked out Dolphin Smalltalk's way of creating COM components? > The Dolphin guys have a wizard to "automatically generate wrapper classes > for all the interfaces defined in the type-library" (from the help file). > > I also was going to suggest checking Dolphin's approach as reference. They have the wizard to wrap visual (OCX) and non-visual components [1], and it works really well, I a past job we wrapped the whole Excel Object Model and a few other things to automate it from Smalltalk. Regards, [1] https://github.com/dolphinsmalltalk/Dolphin/tree/master/Core/Object%20Arts/… Esteban A. Maringolo > Vince > >

Sept. 26, 2019

Re: [Pharo-users] Microsoft COM

by tesonep＠gmail.com

Hi Tomaz, nice to hear you like the code you found. It is a prototype and it is still needing some work. Basically, I needed a use case to continue improving it. Also, historically there was a limitation with the callbacks coming from an external thread, but that should be fixed now with the new Threading-ffi plugin. So, it will be possible also to expose Pharo objects as COM objects. Of course, we should join efforts. Do you have any use case in mind to start working on? Thanks, Pablo On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 10:29 PM eftomi <tomaz.turk(a)ef.uni-lj.si> wrote: > > Hi, > > I finally got some time to check Pablo's PharoCOM package closely. At first > I had problems with simple things, like making Word visible with > properyNamed:put: (it's frustrating when you see the app on the processes > list but you cannot control it :-)) but then I found the reason - it was a > tiny detail in Win32VariantBool>>#write:to:, and then - voila! > > Here's an example of opening Word for Windows, adding a blank document, > typing some text and getting this text back to Pharo: > > Ole32Lib uniqueInstance initLibrary. > wrd := COMDispatchInstance createInstanceByName: 'Word.Application'. > wrd propertyNamed: 'Visible' put: true. > > docs := wrd propertyNamed: 'Documents'. > docs dispatch: 'Add'. > > sel := wrd propertyNamed: 'Selection'. > sel dispatch: 'TypeText' withArguments: {'Hello from Pharo!'}. > > sel dispatch: 'WholeStory' . > Transcript show: (sel propertyNamed: 'Text'); cr. > > Another example is with Active Data Objects to get DB access: > > conn := COMDispatchInstance createInstanceByName: 'ADODB.Connection' . > conn dispatch: 'Open' withArguments: { 'DSN=this; Uid=that; Pwd=theOther;' } > . > conn propertyNamed: 'State' . --> true! > rst := (COMDispatchInstance createInstanceByName: 'ADODB.Recordset') . > rst dispatch: 'Open' withArguments: { 'SomeTableName' . conn . 3 . 1 }. > > The last line raises an exception because not all of the data types that > functions are reporting are implemented yet, as Pablo mentioned in his post. > > The package is really nicely prepared. The most impressive is it's > reflective capability. My "proof of concept" work with DispHelper library > that I mentioned in another forum topic was successful (I can get to the SQL > Server :-)), however it's a dead-end regarding the reflection. > > I'm very interested in COM implementation since I found Pharo to be very > useful as a tool, and since I work in "windowed" environment the COM > interaction is crucial to me. I decided to spent my free evenings working on > the project finalization. I'm not sure of how long will it take though :-) > Pablo, I hope that I can count on your help regarding the questions about > the overall architecture that you set. > > Is anybody else interested in this? Maybe we can join our efforts. > > Best wishes, > Tomaz > > > > -- > Sent from: http://forum.world.st/Pharo-Smalltalk-Users-f1310670.html > -- Pablo Tesone. tesonep(a)gmail.com

Sept. 26, 2019

Workflows and possible usages

by Tim Mackinnon

Hi everyone, in my day job I encountered an interesting domain problem that a previous java team has made a bit of a hash of ... I thought it might be interesting to model it in Pharo to help explain it better to a new team and I was interested in community thoughts as we have some of the best thinkers on tap. The scenario is that a user is presented with several input fields to apply for a loan , one of them is Amount and another the type of loan (cash, invoice, machinery etc). Depending on these answers, they are next presented with different questions - if the amount > 100k there are some high value questions, if the loan type is machinery there are some more additional questions on the type of machine etc. This progresses to a third form and potentially a 4th and 5th. So itâs effectively a decision tree, that rules out different loan types. The UI is a React web form, and Iâve suggested to the team to do some experiments with a dynamic UI that interprets a Json payload that describes the questions, so itâs really about how to model the questions and then render them out in this Json format. I was wondering if this was a typical workflow problem (and whether the netstyle engine was appropriate or wasnât there some other ones announced recently too?) Iâve never used a workflow engine - But it sounds a bit like the problem above? Or not? Alternatively, I was thinking I could model groups of questions into a Decision, and then have a DecisionJourney of Decisions. Each decision could have some match and dependency criteria - e.g. some sort of matcher block eg [:d | d amount > 100 & d type = #machinery] and then some method to add questions to a DecisionForm on a match which would then render the Json payload. But I wondered if workflow engines just do this, and they might handle extra stuff for free. Anyone have any thoughts or directions to explore? Tim Sent from my iPhone

Sept. 26, 2019