[self-interest] Re: running self

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

Eileen Head wrote:
> Hi, I am college student at Binghamton University currently trying to
> learn Self.  I installed the self program by itself on a Soloaris
> machine by itself.  I run the program Self but I cannot get the
> graphical interface running.  I also see that there is a virtual machine
> that can also be installed. 

The program called "Self" (a little over 5 MB in version 4.1) is the virtual
machine. When you run it all by itself, it creates an "empty world" with just a
few objects in it. This empty world has no graphical user interface and can't
even do simple things like add two numbers very nicely ("2+2" will cause an
error). If Self comes up instantly and presents a "VM#" prompt, you will know
that you are working in an empty world. Note that there is enough functionality
here that you could build a more interesting world yourself (for example,
primitive operations work so you could do "2 _IntAdd: 2" and get "4"), but it
is best to start out with a well populated world.

> What exactly needs to be installed and run
> to use the graphical Self interface.  I cannot seem to accomplish
> anything running Self by itself.  Thank you.  

You should have a snapshot file called "Demo.snap" (some 15 MB) and/or
BareBones.snap (11 MB) if you downloaded Self 4.1 or a file called "Snapshot"
(29 MB) if you are using Self 4.0. You can cause the Self virtual machine to
read in the objects from a Snapshot by doing something like:

    ./Self -s Demo.snap

A very different possibility is that you are loading a snapshot but when the
graphical user interface tries to run there are some X Window errors. In this
case the problem can either be that your X server is running with more than 256
colors (this currently doesn't work) or that you haven't given permission for
the host running Self to write to your screen.

If none of this advice works for you, please give some more details so we can
try to figure out what is wrong.

Good luck,
-- Jecel