- Pharo-users - lists.pharo.org

Re: [Pharo-users] Becoming proficient in Pharo

by kilon alios

very good idea indeed. I try to do something similar with my video tutorial, my aim is to help beginners go beyond the basic of pharo. I find creating video tutorial much easier and more fun than writing stuff down. But yes we can do so much more in the area as well. On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 4:13 PM, nacho <0800nacho(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hello, > As I struggle, not without fun of course, to learn more about Pharo and its > frameworks and idea came to my mind. > We could put together some guidelines on how to become proficient in Pharo, > and eventually come to be a power user and / or a developer. > I read several of this recommendations on various list of other programming > languages. > Basically the idea is to have some sort of guide, with theoretical and > practical stuff. > For example: > *Beginners.* > Start by reading Pharo by Example for getting to know the system. > On Agile development read XXXX book or article. > On Object Oriented design and programming read this or that. > For practice do this exercises from this book or site. > For a background on Smalltalk read here or there > Some stuff on algorithms. > > *Intermediate* > Object Serialization read from here. > The VM from here.. > Building UIs > Basic Frameworks > Deep into Pharo > Pharo for the Enterprise > etc, etc, etc > > *Advanced* > etc, etc, etc > > Like a road map to becoming a serious Pharo users and / or developer. I > know > this takes years but I think it would be very useful. Well at least for me. > I sometimes get lost when I read things like serializing, marshalling, > object memory, not to mention the internals of Pharo. > > Here is a link of something someone prepared for Haskell: > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1012573/getting-started-with-haskell > <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1012573/getting-started-with-haskell> > > Just an idea, it will be collaborative. I volunteer to keep and maintain > the > list updated in a place where it will be available to anyone but of course > can't contribute much besides doing that. > Cheers > Nacho > > > > > ----- > Nacho > Smalltalker apprentice. > Buenos Aires, Argentina. > -- > View this message in context: > http://forum.world.st/Becoming-proficient-in-Pharo-tp4799284.html > Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > >

Jan. 13, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Notification on GC of an object?

by Sven Van Caekenberghe

Object>>#finalize ? > On 13 Jan 2015, at 15:13, Johan Fabry <jfabry(a)dcc.uchile.cl> wrote: > > Hi all, > > does anybody here have experience with hooking into the GC mechanism so that an object gets notified when it is collected? I have a setup here with auto generated classes that I would like to remove when their unique instance disappears. So Iâd like to let the GC figure out all the complicated tracking and inform me whenever such an object is collected, then Iâll zap the class as well. > > Experience reports, hints and tips are most welcome! > > ---> Save our in-boxes! http://emailcharter.org <--- > > Johan Fabry - http://pleiad.cl/~jfabry > PLEIAD lab - Computer Science Department (DCC) - University of Chile > >

Jan. 13, 2015

Becoming proficient in Pharo

by nacho

Hello, As I struggle, not without fun of course, to learn more about Pharo and its frameworks and idea came to my mind. We could put together some guidelines on how to become proficient in Pharo, and eventually come to be a power user and / or a developer. I read several of this recommendations on various list of other programming languages. Basically the idea is to have some sort of guide, with theoretical and practical stuff. For example: *Beginners.* Start by reading Pharo by Example for getting to know the system. On Agile development read XXXX book or article. On Object Oriented design and programming read this or that. For practice do this exercises from this book or site. For a background on Smalltalk read here or there Some stuff on algorithms. *Intermediate* Object Serialization read from here. The VM from here.. Building UIs Basic Frameworks Deep into Pharo Pharo for the Enterprise etc, etc, etc *Advanced* etc, etc, etc Like a road map to becoming a serious Pharo users and / or developer. I know this takes years but I think it would be very useful. Well at least for me. I sometimes get lost when I read things like serializing, marshalling, object memory, not to mention the internals of Pharo. Here is a link of something someone prepared for Haskell: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1012573/getting-started-with-haskell <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1012573/getting-started-with-haskell> Just an idea, it will be collaborative. I volunteer to keep and maintain the list updated in a place where it will be available to anyone but of course can't contribute much besides doing that. Cheers Nacho ----- Nacho Smalltalker apprentice. Buenos Aires, Argentina. -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Becoming-proficient-in-Pharo-tp4799284.html Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

Jan. 13, 2015

Notification on GC of an object?

by Johan Fabry

Hi all, does anybody here have experience with hooking into the GC mechanism so that an object gets notified when it is collected? I have a setup here with auto generated classes that I would like to remove when their unique instance disappears. So Iâd like to let the GC figure out all the complicated tracking and inform me whenever such an object is collected, then Iâll zap the class as well. Experience reports, hints and tips are most welcome! ---> Save our in-boxes! http://emailcharter.org <--- Johan Fabry - http://pleiad.cl/~jfabry PLEIAD lab - Computer Science Department (DCC) - University of Chile

Jan. 13, 2015

Object select or create methods

by sergio_101

During my daily work in another framework, we are able to do something very handy like so: myThing := Thing findOrCreateByKey: 'red_thing'. where the key is some underscored all lower case unique name for an object we will be calling all the time. this will return either a new thing with a key of 'red_thing' or the current one that already exists. We can also do something like: myThing updateWithDictionary: aDictionary. and it will flip through the dictionary and assign values to the instance variables. The above is very handy. I am currently creating a bunch of methods that populate my image with real objects, and could use these methods. My question is. Does a behavior like this already exist? If not, I'd like to add these methods to my project (in monticello). They will be used with several different objects, so should I add the methods to Object? I would imagine this is something I would want to use a great deal. How would I go aobut making this something I could include easily in further projects? I realize that the 'updateWithDictionary' is very inefficient, but this will just be somethign that runs once, during data import, and never again. I just want to make sure I am not doing anything whacky. Thanks!

Jan. 13, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Useful tools?

by stepharo

We need a catalog of packages. We started to build such a catalog as a prototype. Now we are reimplementing everything. Stef Le 13/1/15 04:58, Laura Risani a Ã©crit : > Hi all, > > What are some tools / plug-ins/ projects / packages / frameworks > you find very useful or you use very frequently for development? > (please for each name it and state it's purpose) > I'm a newcomer to Pharo , so it hasn't to be something rare. > > > On the side... > I feel curious about how one gets to know about the existence of such > resources. Is there any sort of "resources index" (like a wiki page > with categories)? Besides books which can't be comprehensive because > of their nature. Such an index would be extremely handy in many ways. > Do you agree? Is it plausible, if it doesn't exist, to built it > collaboratively? > > It is a sad thing that useful tools go unnoticed when they could have > solved a problem you faced or eased your work if only you've known > about their existence. For what i've read on spread posts i feel like > there are many such tools. > > I had this experience of useful resource existence ignorance with > TilingWindowManager (LaurentLaffont) and with RBConfigurableFormatter > (by the way i can't figure out how to turn it on). Now i feel like > having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my OS but > anyway...) > > Best, > Laura > > >

Jan. 13, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Useful tools?

by stepharo

> Two questions here: > > 1. The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any > kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of > packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I > have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad, > Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a > single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge > improvement. Can this be added? Yes this is so true. You are 100% right this is why I started to code a catalog extracted from configurationOf. http://ci.inria.fr/ > > 2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available > packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some > library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do > much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than > it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration > features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I > remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low > priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on > it? > > By the way: there is no package description on many package pages. > Even squeaksource tended to have at least one sentence explaining the > purpose of a package (I think?). > >> There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting >> effort on it right now. I think it needs some love. >> > Ok, that's very nice, although the number of "Please project owner add > catalog description" and mention of "MetaRepoForPharo20" is a little > discouraging. > > One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any > other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does > it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog > packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of > results). > > In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is > very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to > a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not > following announcements. > >>> Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my >>> OS but anyway...) >>> > There seems to be a support for this in Pharo 3.0: under right click > in an editor you have Paste and Paste... menu items. The latter > displays a thing that I think is supposed to be a list of recently > copied things. > > My problem, however, is that this doesn't work with OS clipboard (on > Linux). Ctrl+V and Right click->paste don't work at all with OS > clipboard (they do when copying things inside Pharo). X Window systems > have 2 clipboards: one normal and the other called "X selection" - it > seems that the latter is not checked at all, and normal clipboard is > being accessed by Clipboard>>clipboardText (when Alt+p on "Clipboard > default clipboardText"), but it still doesn't work with Ctrl+V. > Strange. > > Anyway, I have a very specific (side-)project in mind and I'm going to > try using Pharo for it, so you can expect quite a bit more questions > from me :) > > Best regards, > Piotr Klibert > >

Jan. 13, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Useful tools?

by kilon alios

"The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad, Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge improvement. Can this be added?" I am the creator of Ephestos , its a library that allow Pharo to be used for scripting Blender (free 3d graphics application). Epicea is for managing changes if I remember correctly, Ston is an implementation of JSON in smalltalk , Pillar is a way to create latex files using Pharo its used by most recent pharo documentation like the Updated Pharo By Example. I think adding a tooltip is not enough a better option would have been a panel that offers a detailed description (a paragraph or two of text) together with other technical info . "2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on it?" Right now Smalltalkhub is pretty much abandonware , this is why I have been recommending to people to move to github . I have been using github for more than 6 month now with pharo and works like a charm and there are other pharo developers that do too. Pharo community just does not have the resources and the man power to solve all these problems with pharo implementations. "One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of results)." I think that can be solved by moving projects to github, there its easier to find news about project you care and new projects. Several blogs also exist that mention new projects etc. Another great source is youtube and vimeo where pharoers including myself have been uploading demos of our projects for years now. Following the mailing lists is a very good idea too. "In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not following announcements." Pharo is not a good choice for begineers , noob friendly solutions requires a lot more work than what you would expect, documentation, blogs, websites, video tutorials. Pharo does not have the size of community to provide that but is in a very good road towards that direction. So I am afraid that this wont change any time soon. I tried to make my own contibution into improving the situation other like Stef and Damien and others have done much more and they definitely care but is just too much work for just a few people. On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 12:19 PM, Piotr Klibert <piotr.klibert(a)10clouds.com> wrote: > Hi, > > nice timing - I returned to Pharo after a couple of months spent > elsewhere and I'm facing the same challenges as Laura. So, a couple of > additional comments and questions from me: > > > > > > Have you tried to use System -> Settings browser -> Formatter? > > > > This setting seems to live under "Refactoring engine" category in the > settings, it is there in vanilla Pharo 3.0 image, but not in the image > downloaded from here: > http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/installing-gtoolkit > > Which package is responsible for adding this setting and in which version? > > BTW: it seems that Roassal and at least parts of Glamour don't want to > work with bitmap fonts (StrikeFont does not understand > #glyphRendererOn: IIRC) at all, despite bitmap font being the default > (at least on Linux). > > > > > Most of them are accessible from the Configuration Browser in Pharo 3, > or by > > searching in http://www.smalltalkhub.com/ > > > > Two questions here: > > 1. The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any > kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of > packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I > have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad, > Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a > single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge > improvement. Can this be added? > > 2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available > packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some > library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do > much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than > it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration > features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I > remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low > priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on > it? > > By the way: there is no package description on many package pages. > Even squeaksource tended to have at least one sentence explaining the > purpose of a package (I think?). > > > > > There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is > putting > > effort on it right now. I think it needs some love. > > > > Ok, that's very nice, although the number of "Please project owner add > catalog description" and mention of "MetaRepoForPharo20" is a little > discouraging. > > One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any > other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does > it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog > packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of > results). > > In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is > very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to > a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not > following announcements. > > >> > >> Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on > my > >> OS but anyway...) > >> > > There seems to be a support for this in Pharo 3.0: under right click > in an editor you have Paste and Paste... menu items. The latter > displays a thing that I think is supposed to be a list of recently > copied things. > > My problem, however, is that this doesn't work with OS clipboard (on > Linux). Ctrl+V and Right click->paste don't work at all with OS > clipboard (they do when copying things inside Pharo). X Window systems > have 2 clipboards: one normal and the other called "X selection" - it > seems that the latter is not checked at all, and normal clipboard is > being accessed by Clipboard>>clipboardText (when Alt+p on "Clipboard > default clipboardText"), but it still doesn't work with Ctrl+V. > Strange. > > Anyway, I have a very specific (side-)project in mind and I'm going to > try using Pharo for it, so you can expect quite a bit more questions > from me :) > > Best regards, > Piotr Klibert > >

Jan. 13, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Useful tools?

by Piotr Klibert

Hi, nice timing - I returned to Pharo after a couple of months spent elsewhere and I'm facing the same challenges as Laura. So, a couple of additional comments and questions from me: > > Have you tried to use System -> Settings browser -> Formatter? > This setting seems to live under "Refactoring engine" category in the settings, it is there in vanilla Pharo 3.0 image, but not in the image downloaded from here: http://www.humane-assessment.com/blog/installing-gtoolkit Which package is responsible for adding this setting and in which version? BTW: it seems that Roassal and at least parts of Glamour don't want to work with bitmap fonts (StrikeFont does not understand #glyphRendererOn: IIRC) at all, despite bitmap font being the default (at least on Linux). > > Most of them are accessible from the Configuration Browser in Pharo 3, or by > searching in http://www.smalltalkhub.com/ > Two questions here: 1. The Configuration Browser is nice, but it still doesn't provide any kind of description for the packages. I mean, looking at the list of packages, I can probably guess what "Dependency Analyser" does, but I have exactly zero chance in guessing what Epicea, Ephestos, Illiad, Kendrick, Mandrill, Marina, Pastell, Pillar or Ston are about. Even a single line description, displayed in a tooltip, would be a huge improvement. Can this be added? 2. SmalltalkHub seems to have no way of browsing all available packages. When I'm starting with Pharo and I don't know how some library I need is called, I'm essentially out of luck: I need to do much googling or ask on a mailing list, which both take more time than it should. I see that " The following is a preview of the exploration features of SmalltalkHub. More to come!" message is still there - I remember it from a year or more back. Is this considered such a low priority task, or is it just that nobody had enough time to work on it? By the way: there is no package description on many package pages. Even squeaksource tended to have at least one sentence explaining the purpose of a package (I think?). > > There is a package named "Catalog", I don't know how many people is putting > effort on it right now. I think it needs some love. > Ok, that's very nice, although the number of "Please project owner add catalog description" and mention of "MetaRepoForPharo20" is a little discouraging. One more question: besides asking on a mailing list, is there any other way of learning about it? Is it linked from somewhere, or does it need a lot of googling and luck (ie. googling for "pharo catalog packages" doesn't return this link, at least on the first page of results). In general I have a feeling that discoverability of Pharo packages is very bad right now. It's a serious problem for new users, and even to a bit more advanced users who return to Pharo after some time of not following announcements. >> >> Now i feel like having a multiclipboard would be useful (i have one on my >> OS but anyway...) >> There seems to be a support for this in Pharo 3.0: under right click in an editor you have Paste and Paste... menu items. The latter displays a thing that I think is supposed to be a list of recently copied things. My problem, however, is that this doesn't work with OS clipboard (on Linux). Ctrl+V and Right click->paste don't work at all with OS clipboard (they do when copying things inside Pharo). X Window systems have 2 clipboards: one normal and the other called "X selection" - it seems that the latter is not checked at all, and normal clipboard is being accessed by Clipboard>>clipboardText (when Alt+p on "Clipboard default clipboardText"), but it still doesn't work with Ctrl+V. Strange. Anyway, I have a very specific (side-)project in mind and I'm going to try using Pharo for it, so you can expect quite a bit more questions from me :) Best regards, Piotr Klibert

Jan. 13, 2015

Re: [Pharo-users] Metacello does not load the expected version from ConfigOf

by Usman Bhatti

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 5:14 PM, Dale Henrichs < dale.henrichs(a)gemtalksystems.com> wrote: > > On 1/12/15 1:43 AM, Usman Bhatti wrote: > > > > On Sun, Jan 11, 2015 at 7:14 PM, Dale Henrichs < > dale.henrichs(a)gemtalksystems.com> wrote: > >> Usman, >> >> Well I don't have an official bugfix yet, but if you filein the attached >> method and run the following, PetitParser will downgrade and get loaded >> correctly (at least it worked for me)...The fist two statements are >> intended to replace GTMetacelloPlatform with MetacelloPharo30Platform and >> initialize the registry correctly ... not sure what impact on Moose these >> changes will have) : >> > >> MetacelloPharo30Platform initialize. >> [ >> MetacelloProjectRegistration >> resetRegistry; >> primeRegistryFromImage ] >> on: Warning >> do: [ :ex | >> Transcript >> cr; >> show: 'Warning resumed: ' , ex description. >> ex resume ]. >> Metacello new >> configuration: 'DummyParser'; >> version: '1.0'; >> repository: '???'; >> onDowngrade: [:ex :existing :new | >> existing projectName = 'PetitParser' >> ifTrue: [ >> new projectSpec operator: #=. >> ex allow ] >> ifFalse: [ ex disallow ] ] ; >> load. >> > > I tried this script as you told but it didn't load the specific version > I was expecting. I had this message printed on Transcript: > > Warning resumed: Warning: Error finding current version of > ConfigurationOfMoose. Probably an invalid specification. > Warning resumed: Warning: Error finding current version of > ConfigurationOfSmallDude. Probably an invalid specification. > Loading 1.0 of ConfigurationOfDummyParser... > Project: PetitParser 1.51 > ...finished 1.0 > > I can wait until you do an official release for this bug fix. In the > meantime, I've created a configOf my own which means I can find alternate > solutions to replace downgrade. I felt that downgrade is yet a must because > one would not like to upgrade all the time. And one would not like to load > packages by hand when configOf is complex. My configOf works currently but > with downgrade available it'll be much more cleaner. > > Ah ... sorry ... I had made one other change and forgot to mention > that:( I did rename the version to 1.5.1 both in petitparser and dummy ... > > Ah well, you are functional and you have certainly helped me, so I > appreciate your help ... My first cut at a fix solves the downgrade but > introduces other issues, so I still working things out:) > > Thanks again! > I can only help with testing because I do not quite understand the internals of Metacello yet to contribute something significant. Please keep us updated about your progress, I am still interested in using downgrade feature. > > > Dale >

Jan. 13, 2015