I just started using Pharo on windows for the first time.

First, I should say that I’m really impressed.  Pharo seems much more solid than when I last tried it.  I programmed all day without getting a walkback!  All of the tools “just worked”.  Well done!   It’s a lot of work creating a solid user experience, but you have done it.

Now I have some Windows-specific questions.  I’m a real windows newbi, so please be patient.

After I downloaded Pharo.app, I dragged the whole directory to a convenient place, and tried to launch the Pharo.lnk file, just like the readme file says.  But there is no such file visible in windows explorer (even though I have “don’t show extensions for known file types” box unchecked.   The file shows up as Pharo.   Anyway, I figured that it was really Pharo.lnk  (Cygwin tells the truth) and double-clicked on it.

This brings up an alert that says  C:\Users\<username>\Desktop\OneClick.app\Contents\Windows\Squeak.exe the specified path does not exist.

Is this because I moved the downloaded package?  Shouldn’t the symlink be relative?

Anyway, I looked in …\ Contents\Windows\, double-clicked on Squeak.exe, and everything started up just fine. 

I worked all day, and saved my image a few times using the Save menu on the desktop.  Each time,  I get the usual confirmatory dialog in the Transcript.

Overnight, my machine shut down.

Today, I relaunch Squeak.exe, and of course I get the virgin image!  Where is the image that I’ve been using?  The Windows “search this computer” tool can’t find it!  What about my package cache?

Eventually I find everything in Pharo.app\Contents\Resources, but not until I’ve had a few moments of panic! 

Questions: Is this the appropriate behaviour on Windows, or was there a user error on my part?  Is it OK to move my image somewhere else?   How can I change the current directory for Pharo on Windows?

OK, so now that I’ve found my image file, how to I re-launch it?  I double-clicked on the .image file, and I got a dialog saying that Windows didn’t know what program to use to open it.  Fair enough.  So I told it to use Squeak.exe.  Pharo launches, and I get: “Error: invalid utf8 input detected”.  It’s treating the image as if it were a source file: it has opened a MultiByteFileSTream on it.  That’s not right.

How do I re-launch my Pharo image?

    Andrew