[self-interest] Problem running Self4.1.2 UI on sparc

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Marko Mikulicic wrote:
> After some hours of pain I finally have uploded Demo.snap to a /tmp dir
> and started Self from that (on a 24-bit display, linux). All ran OK (a
> bit too slow). 

Great!

>  But why can't I rebuild my image using _RunScript.

It seemed like some kind of problem with the scheduler. When you are at
the "VM#" prompt, then the scheduler is not running and the UI won't
work. I noticed that all the threads were complaining about a missing
'opens' slot in desktop. "grepping" through all the .self files in
4.1.2 I didn't find anyone who could be sending this message. Strange.

On Monday, starting Self in a Sparcstation 20 with 64 MB total of RAM
and running at least six copies of Netscape and other heavy stuff
(including some students trying to start up their own copies of Self) I
had to wait at the white "self 1" window for over 10 minutes before the
UI came up. That makes it very hard to tell when it is broken or just
very slooooow.

> I found that the problem is the object "prompt" (wich starts the
> scheduler, right?).

Yes - the prompt replaces the "VM#" as the command line interface when
the scheduler is running. The expression 'scheduler start' should bring
up the prompt.

> I saw also strange problems in the Self worlds, can't open the
> fileeditor
> random clicks on the "radar" results in debugger pop up, outliners
> refuse to show the details of the object ( | { 'blabla' a .b } . c | ).

I noticed a few errors in 4.1.2 that weren't there in 4.0. When Self
gets really slow, it is easy to click in the wrong places and get the
debugger all the time.

> I'll post more detail when I can reproduce the errors,
> but it will be hard to do because I've got no nervs to wait 5 secs for
> open a menu (dismissing a window takes 10 secs, can I deactivate the
> animation?).

There is the 'preferences' object which includes lots of slots in the
"user interface preferences (mostly for ui1)" category. But none seems
to totally disable animations.

> Does anyone know someone who sells cheap sparc machine in
> europe (italy.austria,swiss,croatia) ?

I'll have a machine left over after I get Self to run on the PC ;-)

> Is the scheduler "platform independent" ?

All it needs is a correct implementation of the "TWAINS" primitive
(transfer and wait for interrupt or signal). The rest is in Self and
should be the same on any platform.

-- Jecel