Self-interest October 1995

self-interest@lists.selflanguage.org

17 participants
28 discussions

Hello, world!
by Lars R{der Clausen 31 Oct '95

31 Oct '95

Just arriving at the list - hi folks:) I thought I'd like to introduce myself, as well as give a comment or two: I'm a 4th year comp.sci. student at Aarhus University, Denmark, where we are using Self in a course on Prototypebased Object-Oriented Programming. This is my first experience with Self (and Smalltalk), but I find it pretty intuitive, and would like to add something to it. If somebody wants it, I've made a variant on Sequence which always starts at zero, but has a more time-efficient allocation strategy (amortically O(1)). I haven't checked all the descendant responsibilities yet, though. Apart from my 'real' project (which is a NewtonScript simulator using Mango), I'm trying to implement keyboard shortcuts for menu operations. This implies a redefinition of keyboard subscribing, such that keyboard events that are not used fall through to other subscribers (instead of exclusive subscription). If someone else have tried this, let me know, of course. I'll probably also make a proportional slider, maybe even two-dimensional. Is there a startup-script available which doesn't load the ui2? When testing Mango things, which is done solely on the prompt, it's not nice to have those additional MB's to swap out. Is there a move towards copy-down instead of traits going on? Have anybody implemented copy-down-on-write or the like? -Lars -- Lars Clausen Amiga, BSD, Linux, DOS & ZX in one box elascurn(a)daimi.aau.dk USENET: over 6000 examples of chaos theory -P. Salus in '1/4 Century of UNIX'

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Re: wish list
by keith＠uniteq.com 31 Oct '95

31 Oct '95

> From jecel(a)lsi.usp.br Tue Oct 31 09:11:44 1995 > Date: Tue, 31 Oct 1995 15:22:31 -0200 > From: jecel(a)lsi.usp.br ("Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr.") > To: self-interest(a)self.sunlabs.com > Subject: wish list > Content-Length: 3539 > > It has been a looong time since I last was able to sit down and > play around with Self 4.0 :-( > > Here is what I would like to do if I get a chance (if someone else > wants to do them, be my guest! If I had written this list late > last year, I would have included a web browser and a Smalltalk > emulator as the two most desirable apps! ): > > - xeyes: I did create a stupid little morph that always looks > at the first cursor, but I would redo it right this time. I > was able to learn a lot in just the half an hour it took me > to do this, but I used the mouseMoved: event rather than an > activity. > It's funny that you mention xeyes, because I also implemented the same thing in Self a month ago. I called the morph a "pupil". When embedded in a circleMorph, it follows the handMorph, staying within its owner circleMorph. I implemented it so that it can be associated with any handMorph. The second mouse button on the pupil brings up a menu with "Start" and "Stop". Pressing "Start" associates the pupil with the handMorph that chose the option, and subscribes mouse events. It appears to work fine, except that for some reason, the carpetMorph no longer works properly when the pupil is active. The carpet gets confused about where its origin is, and it appears to the right and below from where the handMorph is. If I can solve this problem and can figure out how to get the module subsystem to save my new module (it is giving me some weird error with a debugger showing a stack with only 1 frame!!!), I will release this to contrib. BTW, what it is a CMOS emulator? Does this have something to do with CMOS in computers?

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wish list
by Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr. 31 Oct '95

31 Oct '95

It has been a looong time since I last was able to sit down and play around with Self 4.0 :-( Here is what I would like to do if I get a chance (if someone else wants to do them, be my guest! If I had written this list late last year, I would have included a web browser and a Smalltalk emulator as the two most desirable apps! ): - xeyes: I did create a stupid little morph that always looks at the first cursor, but I would redo it right this time. I was able to learn a lot in just the half an hour it took me to do this, but I used the mouseMoved: event rather than an activity. - Petri net simulator: that would be easy to do and would impress people around here who are Petri net fans. - CMOS simulator: it would be great to rewrite the simulator I wrote for Self 1.0 to make it totally graphical. It would be so much easier to do with morphs than with any other programming system I know that it is a real shame I haven't done it yet. - table morph: other people have suggested this. I have a simple design for this, but it wouldn't handle cells that span several rows or columns. It would have these slots: widths, heights and cells. - html 3.0 parser: it would be neat to upgrade David's web browser to handle tables (see above), centered things and text alignment, background images and other modern stuff. - HotSelf: a great (but simple) addition would be to be able to include Self code in www pages. All you would have to do is grab the text over the net and "runscript" it. No security, of course :-) - spreadsheet: Ole Madsen already wrote one, but I would like one based on Improv. - matrices: as there are many APL fans around here, I would borrow their matrix models. The default behavior for objects would make them act as a 1 by 1 matrix while vectors would be N by 1 matrices. We might reserve the ";" binary message for building vectors, so it would be easy to write "1;2;3;4;5;6 reshape: 2;3". - better input checking: I am the worst offender regarding checking input, but it would be neat to add some code to the dialog boxes to handle this. When the browser asked me for my proxy name, for example, I stupidly typed "http://www.lsi.usp.br". Getting things working again after this was quite a challenge! - abstract types: David Ungar mentioned at ECOOP that "Any user could add them to Self". It would be a good idea to have some standard, though. I would base abstract types on the Objective-C protocols, though I don't really know too much about them. They would have: - a name - a version number - documentation - a list of message templates with documentation - a test suite that could verify if a Self object is an implementation of the abstract type, and might even give a score indicating the quality of implementation Objects could have an annotation saying which abstract types they implement. I am not sure if abstract types should have some kind of inheritance or not. Anyway, it would be a good idea to be able to ask an abstract type for a prototype, rather than referring to the prototype directly: protocols list aPrototype copy is better than: list copy if we want to allow several programmers to offer list implementations. Please note that my list doesn't include things like "a system-wide undo" because these things, while really needed, are best done by enhancing the virtual machine. -- Jecel

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Re: wish list
by Randall.Smith＠Eng.Sun.COM 31 Oct '95

31 Oct '95

Jecel-- I really like your list. A couple of comments.... > > - HotSelf: a great (but simple) addition would be to be able to > include Self code in www pages. All you would have to do is > grab the text over the net and "runscript" it. No security, of > course :-) Dave and I sat down and added this in about 15 minutes! Press a button and end up with some new self object in your hand. > Please note that my list doesn't include things like "a system-wide > undo" because these things, while really needed, are best done by > enhancing the virtual machine. > Would like to hear your ideas on this one in particular. What are you thinking? A redo of the assignment primitive to keep a reference to the last N old values ??

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Re: Self X demo
by Randall.Smith＠Eng.Sun.COM 26 Oct '95

26 Oct '95

> > COOL BEANS! > > As requested, I thought I'd let you know how using the new Self-Via-X > server went. I first had to allow the X connection through our firewall > (since I am President/Sys. Admin/Janitor of Glyphic, this didn't involve > too much arm twisting!) > > My first attempt was via an X server (eXodus by White Pine) running on my > PowerMac. This came up fine and everything looked beautiful... except that > I only have a 832x624 screen! The demo is VERY biased to 1024x800! In > fact the "panner" object is almost totally offscreen (if it were, I'd have > been stuck!) > Yow! Good point! we're just using the standard release, in which we tailored the screens to fit Sun displays comfortably. > My second attempt was via X-Free86 running on a 486DX4/100Mghz Linux > machine (with a 1024x800 screen). While the colors were a little off (the > colormap also goes nuts when you move outside the Self window - a > combination of how Self handles color and how the server handles color - > eXodus is more intellegent about it), and the speed a little less > responsive (eXodus implements more of the optional X protocol, including > stuff to make better use of the connection) - over all: IT WORKED! I had > a blast running Self. > > As for speed issues: I have an ISDN line to the Internet that runs usually > at 56kb/s, but can bump on to 128kb/s on demand. During my run, it never > went up to 128kb/s, probably because the traffic is really very bursty and > averages (over the interval of 90sec that my router uses to measure these > things) well below 56kb/s. Yes, I would guess that you could make use of the higher bandwidth to capture those bursts. > It was quite usable, though a bit sluggish, > especially the first time any particular menu came up. Are you cacheing > these in the X server or am I seeing the compile delay? Probably the compilation delay (guess). > Over all the feel > was reminescent of early Smalltalks! Probably next time I try it, I'll > force the line to 128kb/s and see if makes any difference. > > > I came accross these problems with me and/or the demo: > > * I managed to loose the panner at one point - total death: there seems to > be no way to navigate without it, and there are no instructions on how to > use it other than the arrows. I accidentally somthing-clicked in the map > part of it and my screen went to some outer-limits of the world: > unfortunatly the panner was nowhere to be seen. > You can use the background menu to make a factory window, from which a new panner (acutally "radar view") can be plucked, and directly carried across windows into your world. Or perhaps quicker given the latency concerns of opening a new window, make a new shell from the background window, type in "radarView copy" then middle button select from the top of the resulting outliner "show morph". > * I mistyped some code, and got a debugger up in a new X window when I ran > it (I had typed "deposit 50" in an evaluator rather than "deposit: 50". > Unfortunately I just closed the new X window - leaving my world user > interface process hung in a debugger I could no longer get to: You should > allow X windows to be closed w/o confirmation... or you should restart the > main UI process after some dead-man timeout... Hmm, an innocent error like yours should not cause the ui to fail like that. Anyway, again, for the normal release you have a shell to type into for emergencies. The timeout for a new UI might be a good idea, but even that would not solve corrupted world display code, for example. > > * Obvious minor nit: the demo asks you to save a module, only in this > configuration you don't have write access to the directory. Oh well. It > would be nice if I could write to it, and when the server finally shuts > down, you could mail me the files in the directory (just tar it!) and then > wipe it clean. I would like to have seen the module save output file. > Wow. Weird and cool! We'll see... > * I couldn't get the web browser to work - some error about unable to reach > the host in the URL I gave it. Since it was a machine on the same subnet I > was running the demo on, and URL into our public web server, this is > probably a firewall/filter problem on your end. > > We're mystified on this one. Mario tried it again here and seems okay (?) > On self as a whole: > > UI2 is very nice: Congratulations John and Randy! Two quirks come to mind: > > (A) Setting properties on a nested collection of morphs to get them to > layout the way you want requires ALOT of mousing around. In Codeworks we > solve this by when you get the properties of an Aligner (our equivelant to > a matrix of row and column morphs), you can set the layout properties of > whole rows or columns of embedded views (our equivelent of morphs) at the > same time from the same window. You sort of have this in the core sampler, > but that is in the Z plane, and in the X and Y directions would be more > useful. Get it...yes, a table morph might be a nice addition, plus extra tools for layout too, I suppose. Sigh, more tools... > > (B) The philosophic its-built-in-itselfness comes through rather heavily - > while loads of fun us programmer weenies, it sometimes gets in the way: > Right button menu Dismiss on a Right Button Menu to get it to go away is > cumbersome. This is odd...how often did you have to do that and why? > Similarly, since the buttons are press-hold-release, and they > retain the last option you choose as the default, (a terrible combination > in my view,) it is very easy to accidentally delete parts of the > programming interface: Dismiss any morph, then accidentally momentarily > press right button over somthing useful in the interface (like the little > buttons in outliners) - there go your buttons into the void! (Remember: > Right button is under the ring finger, the one that you have least moter > control over. On a sensitive mouse, random extra right clicks are not > unprecidented.) Perhaps things like outlines should be "locked" from morph > operations until expressly "unlocked" since most of the time most > programmers don't want to pull apart the outliners (even though it IS neat > that you can...) There is supposed to be a time sensitivity in there so that nothing happens if you click then release too quickly. I really like the remember-the-last-selection behavior. > > > Random musings: > > I can't wait to see/play with Self with the distributed shared environment! > I wonder if there is a "lesser" form of this that could be designed where > the shared object protocols were such that different language systems could > participate. Obviously I'm thinking it would be cool to be running > Codeworks/Glyphic Script on one machine, sharing an object space with a > Self system on another. While certain types of interactions are clearly > not going to be possible (probably can't inherit from each other's objects) > - others should be easy (such as using the UI of each other's objects, and > storing each other's objects). Glyphic Script isn't so far from Self that > this would inordinately hard (as opposed to trying to do it with, say, > ADA...) Hmmmmm.... > Hmmm indeed! Wow. Actually it sounds pretty difficult. Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments!

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Re: Self X demo
by David.Ungar＠Eng.Sun.COM 25 Oct '95

25 Oct '95

Mark, thanks a lot for the great ideas! I'm glad you were able to play. -- Dave

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Self X demo
by markl＠glyphic.com 25 Oct '95

25 Oct '95

COOL BEANS! As requested, I thought I'd let you know how using the new Self-Via-X server went. I first had to allow the X connection through our firewall (since I am President/Sys. Admin/Janitor of Glyphic, this didn't involve too much arm twisting!) My first attempt was via an X server (eXodus by White Pine) running on my PowerMac. This came up fine and everything looked beautiful... except that I only have a 832x624 screen! The demo is VERY biased to 1024x800! In fact the "panner" object is almost totally offscreen (if it were, I'd have been stuck!) My second attempt was via X-Free86 running on a 486DX4/100Mghz Linux machine (with a 1024x800 screen). While the colors were a little off (the colormap also goes nuts when you move outside the Self window - a combination of how Self handles color and how the server handles color - eXodus is more intellegent about it), and the speed a little less responsive (eXodus implements more of the optional X protocol, including stuff to make better use of the connection) - over all: IT WORKED! I had a blast running Self. As for speed issues: I have an ISDN line to the Internet that runs usually at 56kb/s, but can bump on to 128kb/s on demand. During my run, it never went up to 128kb/s, probably because the traffic is really very bursty and averages (over the interval of 90sec that my router uses to measure these things) well below 56kb/s. It was quite usable, though a bit sluggish, especially the first time any particular menu came up. Are you cacheing these in the X server or am I seeing the compile delay? Over all the feel was reminescent of early Smalltalks! Probably next time I try it, I'll force the line to 128kb/s and see if makes any difference. I came accross these problems with me and/or the demo: * I managed to loose the panner at one point - total death: there seems to be no way to navigate without it, and there are no instructions on how to use it other than the arrows. I accidentally somthing-clicked in the map part of it and my screen went to some outer-limits of the world: unfortunatly the panner was nowhere to be seen. * I mistyped some code, and got a debugger up in a new X window when I ran it (I had typed "deposit 50" in an evaluator rather than "deposit: 50". Unfortunately I just closed the new X window - leaving my world user interface process hung in a debugger I could no longer get to: You should allow X windows to be closed w/o confirmation... or you should restart the main UI process after some dead-man timeout... * Obvious minor nit: the demo asks you to save a module, only in this configuration you don't have write access to the directory. Oh well. It would be nice if I could write to it, and when the server finally shuts down, you could mail me the files in the directory (just tar it!) and then wipe it clean. I would like to have seen the module save output file. * I couldn't get the web browser to work - some error about unable to reach the host in the URL I gave it. Since it was a machine on the same subnet I was running the demo on, and URL into our public web server, this is probably a firewall/filter problem on your end. On self as a whole: UI2 is very nice: Congratulations John and Randy! Two quirks come to mind: (A) Setting properties on a nested collection of morphs to get them to layout the way you want requires ALOT of mousing around. In Codeworks we solve this by when you get the properties of an Aligner (our equivelant to a matrix of row and column morphs), you can set the layout properties of whole rows or columns of embedded views (our equivelent of morphs) at the same time from the same window. You sort of have this in the core sampler, but that is in the Z plane, and in the X and Y directions would be more useful. (B) The philosophic its-built-in-itselfness comes through rather heavily - while loads of fun us programmer weenies, it sometimes gets in the way: Right button menu Dismiss on a Right Button Menu to get it to go away is cumbersome. Similarly, since the buttons are press-hold-release, and they retain the last option you choose as the default, (a terrible combination in my view,) it is very easy to accidentally delete parts of the programming interface: Dismiss any morph, then accidentally momentarily press right button over somthing useful in the interface (like the little buttons in outliners) - there go your buttons into the void! (Remember: Right button is under the ring finger, the one that you have least moter control over. On a sensitive mouse, random extra right clicks are not unprecidented.) Perhaps things like outlines should be "locked" from morph operations until expressly "unlocked" since most of the time most programmers don't want to pull apart the outliners (even though it IS neat that you can...) Random musings: I can't wait to see/play with Self with the distributed shared environment! I wonder if there is a "lesser" form of this that could be designed where the shared object protocols were such that different language systems could participate. Obviously I'm thinking it would be cool to be running Codeworks/Glyphic Script on one machine, sharing an object space with a Self system on another. While certain types of interactions are clearly not going to be possible (probably can't inherit from each other's objects) - others should be easy (such as using the UI of each other's objects, and storing each other's objects). Glyphic Script isn't so far from Self that this would inordinately hard (as opposed to trying to do it with, say, ADA...) Hmmmmm.... - Mark ------------------- Mark Lentczner Glyphic Technology 1209 Villa Street Mtn. View, CA 94041 415/964-5311 markl(a)glyphic.com http://www.glyphic.com/

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Re: Q: Using custom outliner in Self Env.
by Lars Bak 25 Oct '95

25 Oct '95

>Now the question is: How does Self associate a Self object with >the Outliner morph, and can I intervene in order to tell >the environment to use my own outliner instead (read: HOW do I >intervene)? In "traits objectOutliner" you'll find the method "copyMirror:World:" which creates an outliner for an object. This method checks whether the object has an associated outliner in the worldMorph by consulting a dictionary (look for a slot named reifiedObjects). You can intervene the current behavior by changing the code snippets calling: "objectOutliner copyMirror:World:" (use "senders of"). Enjoy, Lars Bak

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Re: Linux
by Jecel Mattos de Assumpcao Jr. 24 Oct '95

24 Oct '95

On Tue, 24 Oct 1995 11:36:09 +0100, Brendan Gowing <bgowing(a)dsg.cs.tcd.ie> wrote: > I'm still waiting for Jecel's version of Self! > > Have you any news for us Jecel? Your version of Self is eagerly > awaited! Well, I wasn't going to answer the original post as all I can say is that tinySelf is late ( as usual :-( ) and Dick Ulrich asked about a *port* to Linux ( I think he already knew about my version ). As tinySelf is just a simple interpreter, it would in no way replace a real port of Self 4.0 to Linux - I would love to get one too! BTW - some of the things that have been delaying tinySelf might make future versions better than they would be, though they do nothing for this first implementation. Another thing - I am preparing a two disk set derived from the Slackware boot disks so that people who don't have Linux installed can try out tinySelf by booting directly from the floppy. -- Jecel

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Linux
by hrulrich＠conline.com 24 Oct '95

24 Oct '95

Hello, Is anyone porting Self to Linux ? Thanks, Dick Ulrich

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Self-interest October 1995