well done, this is indeed a very good tutorial and more than welcomed, thank you :) I twitted it :) On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 11:30 AM, Marcus Denker <marcus.denker@inria.fr>wrote:

On 07 Nov 2013, at 10:08, Clément Bera <bera.clement@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm glad you are doing that :).

Marcus could you tweet about this blog on the Pharo tweeter account

Yes, I will do that (i put it in the queue, I do one per day max :-)

? So many people are waiting for more tutorials on Spec.

2013/11/7 Bahman Movaqar <Bahman@bahmanm.com>

...

Hi all,

I'm writing a series of tutorials for Spec for beginners like myself and I'd really appreciate any input on the material. The first episode is done: http://www.bahmanm.com/blogs/spec-part-1-basics

-- Bahman Movaqar (http://BahmanM.com <http://bahmanm.com/>)

ERP Evaluation, Implementation & Deployment Consultant PGP Key ID: 0x6AB5BD68 (keyserver2.pgp.com)

Really nice tutorial :) If I were you, I would based it on Pharo 3.0 more than 2.0. Why ? Because your tutorial will be outdated quite soon (in a couple on months) when 3.0 will be released. Our you could try to use the latest Spec version at least since the one shipped in 2.0 is old and out-dated :P But it’s always cool to see people writing things about my work :) Once again, really nice tuto, and I like the way you write, keep going :) Ben On 07 Nov 2013, at 16:01, btc@openinworld.com wrote:

Bahman Movaqar wrote:

...

Hi all,

I'm writing a series of tutorials for Spec for beginners like myself and I'd really appreciate any input on the material. The first episode is done: http://www.bahmanm.com/blogs/spec-part-1-basics

Thanks Bahman. I like your writing style and theme. The code snippets are well presented. What platform is your blog hosted on?

Some feedback...

-----------

Not sure if you should be prompting people to dirty the Spec package by using example category Spec-Tutorial. Even though there is currently no such a package, one day there might be. Perhaps using category My-Spec-Tutorial would be better alternative.

----------------

...

further radio buttons setup is done in setupTitleRadioButtons: looks like it should lose the colon at the end of the method name

------------- An alternative to the nested IF statements in MyFirstWindow>>userTitle...

If you extend RadioButtonGroup with... RadioButtonGroup>>selected ^buttons detect: [:b | b state ].

and add instance variable 'radioButtonGroup' to MyFirstWindow

and in MyFirstWindow>>setupTitleRadioButtons do.... radioButtonGroup := RadioButtonGroup new

then you could have... MyFirstWindow>>userTitle ^ radioButtonGroup selected label

Then again, for someone completely new to Smalltalk, the nested IF statements might be more familiar. So perhaps leave that part as it is, then describe how to refactor the code to be more 'Pharo' like. You might say... "at the time I did this, the RadioButtonGroup class was missing a method to return the selected button, but it was simple to extend the library with the following...."

Note that I tested this on Pharo3, but I expect Pharo 2 would be the same for this case.

cheers -ben

Very nice tutorial! Keep on posting! best regards nacho *Lic. Ignacio Sniechowski, MBA* On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 2:36 PM, Bahman Movaqar <Bahman@bahmanm.com> wrote:

On 11/07/2013 09:13, Bahman Movaqar wrote:

...

Hi all,

I'm writing a series of tutorials for Spec for beginners like myself and I'd really appreciate any input on the material. The first episode is done: http://www.bahmanm.com/blogs/spec-part-1-basics

Thank you folks for your encouraging! To be honest, that's one of the things that caught my attention to Pharo at first. The positive and helpful community. Glad that I could contribute a tad bit.

@Ben: My website is running Plone (http://plone.org) using my own Plone hosting service (http://www.bahmanm.com/services/plone-hosting). Let me know if you're interested :-) Also the code highlighting is done by Good old Emacs :-) RE setupTitleRadioButtons: That's correct. The `:` should be left out of highlighting. RE userTitle: Cool! It takes time for me to change my Swing'ish way of looking at things. I'll add that. RE package: Subtle point. I'll change the package name.

-- Bahman Movaqar (http://BahmanM.com)

ERP Evaluation, Implementation & Deployment Consultant PGP Key ID: 0x6AB5BD68 (keyserver2.pgp.com)

On 11/09/2013 12:23, btc@openinworld.com wrote:

Some minor nit-picks...

...

"please do so as we are going to iterate over what was done there." I don't understand what you mean by 'iterate over'? Do you me 'build on'?

Yes, that's what I meant: "improve". If you find it hard to understand, let me know.

...

"let's first settle for a target design. For the rest of this episode, we will try to achieve the following design. " I get to the bottom and the last snapshot it doesn't look the same as the one at the top. At the top you should mention that your target design is achieved over several posts (if that is the case).

No wonder it doesn't match :-) Figure 1 is not a snapshot from the system. It is the UI design done in LibreOffice draw. I'll mention that.

...

"Note lines 9, 10, 17 and 18." "Note new lines 9, 10, 17 and 18."

* At the top you should specify what version of Pharo the tutorial relates to. Information on the web hangs around for a very long time and someone could get trapped later trying your tutorial on a later version of Pharo.

Correct. That's why at the beginning of this episode the reader is asked to first proceed to episode 1 if he hasn't done so already and in episode one in Prerequisites section (http://www.bahmanm.com/blogs/spec-part-1-basics#section-1) it is mentioned that for this series Pharo 2.0 will be used.

* Regarding #defaultSpec, I happen to like what is used in PharoLauncher specLayout <spec: #default> ^ SpecLayout composed ...etc

I don't understand your point. Could you elaborate a bit more on this?

Overall it a nice next step introducing just a bit more functionality. It reads very well. I look forward to the next one.

Your comments are much appreciated. It's always very useful to have another couple of eyes, QC a document :-) Thanks. -- Bahman Movaqar (http://BahmanM.com) ERP Evaluation, Implementation & Deployment Consultant PGP Key ID: 0x6AB5BD68 (keyserver2.pgp.com)

btc@openinworld.com wrote:

P.S. Some questions for Spec gurus...

* looking at #defaultSpec from this episode, if the pattern is always... mainColumn newRow: [ :aRow | aRow doStuff; otherStuff... ] what is gained over a pattern like... mainColumn newRow doStuff ; otherStuff.

I guess I can answer my own question from observing PharoLauncher's use of 'r' in the nested block. PhLCommandToolbar>>dynamicLayout "Create a spec layout with 1 row, and as many columns as there are command classes" ^ SpecLayout composed newRow: [ :r | self commandClasses do: [ :commandClass | r add: commandClass specId ] ] cheers -ben

Bahman Movaqar wrote:

Hi all,

A new episode is availabe: Spec - Part II: The Layout (http://www.bahmanm.com/blogs/spec-part-2-layout)

I'd appreciate any comments/hints. TIA,

Question to Spec gevelopers... Referring to Bahman's example, how do you set the color of: * the 'Greet Me' button - I tried adding "buttonGreet color: Color red." to both #initializeWidgets and #initializePresenter, with no error, but also no effect. * dialog background - I don't see anything like #color under ComposableModel. cheers -ben