On 1/12/23 6:11, Craig Johnson wrote:

for those who are interested.

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/5373567/Smallscript-A-Smalltalk-Inspire...

Thanks. It looks interesting indeed. So much that, what was a short answer became a long reflection on minimal environments that provide support for diverse learners (beyond developers or computer scientists) via data storytelling and computational notebook. Here it comes. ====== I have been using Nim integrated with Pharo/GT when I need go to the console, performance optimizations  or use a library/functionality not yet in Pharo, and I would like a better shell and external programs story in Pharo/GT (I know the second is build on the first, despite having different agendas, but that's the combination I use and for me, GT's power provides from being done in Pharo). I would like something fast and self contained / portable that can be run from the terminal, but it is also able bootstrap a more complex environment and GUI as needs require it, as I'm interested in data storytelling for diverse learners (mainly non-developers) and computational notebooks, that run in restricted/bureaucratic institutional environments with low/restricted/intermittent connectivity (for example university labs). I will compare what is available AFAIK in the Pharo ecosystem, with what I have found recently Pluto.jl[1][1a] (and others), which brings this kind of bootstrappable computational notebook experience, thinking in how Pharoers, could benefit from a bootstrapable experience from shell at the end. 1. Pluto can run from a portable program that doesn't require admin permission to install: just uncompress and run (like Pharo). 2. Pluto provides an interactive programming Julia shell where you can load more packages and launch the WUI (Web UI). In Pharo's case, there are Coral[2] and Scale[2a], with the second pretty close to a shell + loadable graphical interface, but both seem unmaintained. 3. Pluto provides an interactive notebook interface (like GT), but it is reactive, non-blocking and stores a computational graph of related variables/expressions. 4. Pluto stores its notebooks as human/diff friendly plain text and, in fact, they're just Julia scripts[3] (like Clojure's Clerk[3a][3b]). As I told in ESUG 2023, we have been porting some lessons from Grafoscopio to Lepiter about having human/diff friendly formats to store computational notebooks using Markdeep[4], which is similar to the approach taken by Elixir's LiveBook[3c]. See for example this documents, and their source code, on building modular parsers with PetitParser[4a] (ported from the chapter in Pharo books) or on migrating from WordPress to TiddlyWiki[4b]. Such formats are in contrast with long nested diff/human unfriendly JSON documents of Jupyter or Lepiter, and pretty readable outside Pluto, Clerk, LiveBook or Lepiter, just with a plain text editor or a web browser (in Markdeep's case). So, how could we to have a pretty minimal Smalltalk/Pharo powered shell language/mini-image that can execute .st scripts (like with Coral and Scale) and launch a notebook, being it native (like Lepiter, with its wonderful one single rendering tree, but more minimalist and with async snippets/code execution by default) or web UI (still to be created, maybe with HTMX)? My approach, for the moment, is to develop MiniDocs[4] to provide support for minimalist documentation tools (starting with Markdeep and some Pandoc support) and some notebook web rendering (via Zinc) and export. Pandoc's Markdown export with metadata to make notebooks collaborative (as we are doing with Markdeep) is yet to be done (but soon in the radar). Also Brea[5] will be (slowly) used/revied to explore building web sites/interfaces (now that HTMX is available to avoid JS) Still, the question of how minimal Pharo or GT can be made to run from shell or integrate with external software ecosystems is an open question for me. Seems that the best approach would be to revive Scale (or Coral) and to see which minimal elements of a computational notebook experience can be bootstrapped from there and which lessons from more (b)loaded environments can we port to such minimal systems, while still interop with the wider Pharo ecosystem or even with other languages (like Nim or Julia). Maybe PharoIoT or other minimalist images could be a starting point also (but pharoiot.org seems also unmaintained). I'll keep the community posted on the experiments sketched above. Cheers, happy new year and thanks for the Pharo community, ecosystem and all the hard work and good vibe behind. Offray == Links [1] https://plutojl.org/ [1a] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg3r3gG4nQo [2] https://speakerdeck.com/cdlm/coral-esug-2011?slide=2 [2a] https://github.com/guillep/Scale [3] https://featured.plutojl.org/ [3a] https://clerk.vision/ [3b] https://book.clerk.vision/ [3c] https://livebook.dev/ [4] https://code.sustrato.red/Offray/MiniDocs/ [4a] http://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/mutabit/doc/trunk/wiki/en/petitparser-buildi... [4b] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/gig/doc/trunk/wiki/en/gig-portable-wiki--1a... [5] https://code.sustrato.red/Offray/Brea [5a] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/indieweb/ [5b] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/brea/