Self-interest January 2019

self-interest@lists.selflanguage.org

1 participants
2 discussions

twentiethCenturyPlusArgumentCount
by Jecel Assumpcao Jr. 16 Jan '19

16 Jan '19

Self 4.1 added a few bytecodes to the 4.0 set in order to make interpreters simpler. I see that in Self 2017.1 we have one more: argumentCount. Not having to count colon characters in a string should certainly make an interpreter much faster even if each send grows by one bytes (so going from 5 bytes, the bytecode plus the literal that is rarely shared, so 6 bytes - just a 20% overhead). The fact that multiple bytecode sets can be used in a single snapshot complicates things, but the current Squeak/Pharo/Cuis VM has added this capability as well. But it isn't clear to me how this is supposed to work. If the very first bytecode in a method is the INSTRUCTION_SET_SELECTION then its operand indicates what the rest of the bytecodes are like, otherwise instruction set 0 is assumed. My problem is that this special bytecode is defined as being the same as the argumentCount bytecode. Isn't there a danger of some method using the default bytecode but starting out with a send looking like it had an explicit instruction set instead? I suppose that the bytecode compiler could take care to never let this happen. The one method I examined did start with bytecode 208. -- Jecel

1 1

verdana
by Jecel Assumpcao Jr. 15 Jan '19

15 Jan '19

I tried the 2017.1 version of Self on a Mac and it worked ok, but in Ubuntu 14 Linux it keeps complaining that it can't find the Verdana font. I installed that and it shows up in applications like OpenOffice but it is a TrueType font and X11 doesn't seem to handle those (it is in a directory that is not on the X11 font path). Looking at the object x11Globals fontFamily, verdana is not on the long list of fonts Self knows about. But looking at the fontSpec object associated with a slot in an outliner I can see that it wants to use Verdana 12 as its font. The replacement it used is very painful to look at. Is this a simple preference that can be changed or is there coding involved to fix this? -- Jecel

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

Self-interest January 2019