HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mjb@netcom.com (Martin Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Sept ST irc conf transcript available
Date: 2 Sep 92 20:26:13 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

The transcript of the September 2, 1992 meeting of smalltalk users held
on irc is available from the archives.

   archive site: st.cs.uiuc.edu
   directory   : /pub/irc
   file        : st_irc9_92.txt  or  st_irc9_92.txt.Z

These files will be mirrored to the manchester site (cs.man.ac.uk) soon.


-- 

                                   - mjb -

                                mjb@netcom.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner)
Subject: Re: CAN (now) examine Objectkit AP messages
Organization: University of Western Ont, London
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 17:39:52 GMT

In article <1992Aug28.161143.1@uwovax.uwo.ca>, brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner) writes:
>    Well, as I threatened yesterday, I started to examine the Advanced
> Programming Terminal Emulator.  That is I tried, but something is in
> the way.  In fact, I cannot select any method in any AP class.  When
> I try, I receive a diagnostic window:
> 
> 	Unhandled exception: Subscript out of bounds: 0
> 	---------------
> 	ByteString(Object)>>subscriptBoundsError:
> 	ByteString(Object)>>basicAt:
> 	ByteString(ByteEncodedString)>>byteAt:
> 	ByteString(ByteEncodedString)>>at:
> 	ByteString>>at:
> 
>    The interesting thing is that I can *use* the components; I just can't
> examine them to see how they work.  Suggestions please.  Thank you.  b.

	After following several courses attempting to "fix" the problem,
	I re-installed the AP code, and everything is fine now.  Thanks
	to everyone who sent me email trying to help.  b.
--
Brent Sterner                       Manager, Academic Technical Support
Fast:       <BRENT@uwo.ca>          <129.100.2.13>
Telephone:  (519)661-2151 x 6036    Fax:   (519)661-3486
Slow:  Computing & Communications Services, Natural Sciences Building
       The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 5B7
From: rpomeroy@aunext3.cam.amd.com (Ron Pomeroy x(Coop))
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Smalltalk for NeXT ?
Date: 2 Sep 92 14:45:36 GMT
Reply-To: rpomeroy@aunext3.cam.amd.com
Distribution: usa
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Austin, Texas

In article <1992Aug28.103234.6010@m.cs.uiuc.edu> johnson@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Ralph  
Johnson) writes:
>>The rumour *I* heard was that ParcPlace ported Smalltalk to the NeXT
>>years ago.  It supposedly only takes them a few days to get it running
>>on a new Unix machine.  They can then spend weeks or months tweaking it to
>>make it faster, but the real cost comes if they try to make it a product.
>>Having it be a product means that they have to have at least a quarter of
>>a person assigned to maintain it.  In addition, the NeXT has a somewhat
>>higher standard of "compatability" than other Unix machines, so they would
>>have to do more work to make NeXT users happy.  
>>
>>Unfortunately, they decided (and probably correctly) that they couldn't
>>make any money off of the NeXT because there were so few commercial
>>users.  So, they put the whole thing on hold.  It is possible that
>>they have reevaluated things and decided that there is now a market
>>for it.  Of course, only ParcPlace really knows.  This is just speculation.

This is incorrect.  WilTel (Woodlands, Tx. ) and Advanced Micro Devices (see  
sig) sponsored the port.  It started earlier this year.  First they got it  
running under X-Windows on the NeXT.  Now they're tying into the Display  
PostScript window server.  Stay tooned :-)
--
Ronald Pomeroy
Advanced Micro Devices
CAM Applications Group
rpomeroy@aunext3.amd.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: mjb@netcom.com (Martin Brown)
Subject: Smalltalk meeting Sept 2, on irc
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 16:04:44 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 


***************************

ANNOUNCING

Meeting of Smalltalk Users

------

When: Wednesday, September 2, 1992      

Time: 10:00am PDT, (Pacific **DAYLIGHT** Time, U.S.A.)  

Where: on the Internet Relay Chat (irc)

IRC Channel: #programST        

Channel Topic: programming in Smalltalk 

***************************

This time should allow greater participation from European ST users.

-- 

                                   - mjb -

                                mjb@netcom.com

Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: irvine@ntmtv.UUCP (Chuck Irvine)
Subject: wordwrap in VWIN TextPanes
Organization: Northern Telecom Inc, Mountain View, CA
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 02:22:39 GMT

Does anyone know how to make typein to VWIN TextPanes
automatically wordwrap? The Digitalk documentation seems to 
say it's possible, but, of course, they don't tell you how. Great
software - now if they would just extend their documentation.

Chuck Irvine
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: tigre@netcom.com (Jordan Bortz)
Subject: Tigre for 4.1 - the Facts!
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 92 21:44:40 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 


Tigre is currently shipping the Tigre 1.62 Beta for Objectworks\Smalltalk
Release 4.1 customers opon the mac and windows platforms.

The initial release of the beta had a problem reading in the globals
file on the mac, although this has been corrected and is being sent out.

We expect to go to full release on the Tigre 1.62 product including Unix,
within the next three weeks.

The original version of Tigre 1.60/1.61 will *not* run on Objectworks 4.1,
and you must order the Tigre 1.62 upgrade to run on 4.1.

	
	Jordan 

-- 
Jordan Bortz, tigre@netcom.com 408 427 4900
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: jon@iti.gov.sg (Jonathan Priddey)
Subject: Smalltalk/V 1.1 DLL access
Reply-To: jon@iti.gov.sg
Organization: Information Technology Institute, National Computer Board, S'pore
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 05:05:37 GMT

I've still got the same problem as last month and still not got my 2.0 upgrade...

To recap, I need to pass an array of WinStructs to a DLL. There is a DLL fn
that looks something like

long fn(int no, mystruct** arr)

This is intended to process an array of 'no` mystructs. It seems to me I need
to get the address of the start of the data rather than the 12 byte object
header (how?), plug the data addresses into a ByteArray then use it with asParameter.

A few questions,
1/ Has anyone done this
2/ Is there an approach I'm missing
3/ Is it explained better in the 2.0 manual than my 1.1? 

Thanks, Jon. (jon@iti.gov.sg)
 

Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: voss@cs.uiuc.edu (Bill Voss)
Subject: Re: Which coding technique is "correct"?
Organization: Typed Smalltalk Group, Dept of Comp Sci, Univ of IL in Urbana.
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 16:14:24 GMT

>>>>> On Thu, 27 Aug 1992 19:04:27 GMT, brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner) said:

>    This query relates to coding technique.  For those of you who have not
> been following my beginners questions, I am doing the following:

>    I have defined a generic object called a disk, and a subclass of disk
> called RF72.  The capacity of disk is delegated to its subclasses.  I have
> (at least) two ways of proceeding.

>    a) define a class variable, Capacity, for each type of disk my system
>       understands.  This was my first instinct as my understanding of st
>       grows.  It feel "right" (perhaps since it was self brewed :-).

>    b) A more sophisticated user suggested I may as well just use a constant.
>       In other words, "aRF72 capacity" simply "^1954050".  This is simple,
>       and avoids using a class variable at all, but it leaves me with an
>       uneasy feeling that this may not be good coding practise.  On the other
>       hand, who am I to judge?  I'm still a novice!

>    Is there a preferred way to deal with this concept?  Or is is a matter
> of personal taste?  How do *you* implement this sort of thing?   Thanks,  b.

My first inclination would be to simply add an instance variable to
class disk, and specify the disk size at instance creation.

My second choice would be to create a subclass of disk for every kind
of disk, in which case I would normally use a constant method to
return the size.  (For floppy disk drives I'ld return 0 if the drive
was empty, and ^(floppy capacity) if a disk was inserted.)

I wouldn't use a class variable because the size seems to always be
either static, or unique to the instance.  I can't think of any time I
would want to change the capacity for all instances of the class at
run time.  If you can think of such a case, then do use a class
variable for that class.

-Bill Voss
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Date:         Thu, 27 Aug 1992 19:54:39 CET
From:         Alex Franz <FRANZ@ZE8.RZ.UNI-DUESSELDORF.DE>
Subject:      OOP / Smalltalk -- theoretical papers about
Comments: To: SmallTalk programming language discussion
              <SMALK%FINHUTC.bitnet@IBM.rhrz.uni-bonn.de>

> Hi!
>
> I'm actually working on a paper on chinese morphology and want to
> use/cite some basic ideas of OOP/Smalltalk.
>
> Can anybody give me a hint where to get theoretical paper about
> oop/smalltalk from ? (papers of the 70ies from PARC/Xerox are
> maybe the best ?!?)
>
> Please contact me directly, because I'm actually not subscribed to
> this list
That's no more true, as Joerg (list-owner) told me.
>
> Thanks for any help
>
> Alexander
> ##############################################################################
> Alexander Franz                               Phonology
> Seminar fuer Allg. Sprachwissenschaft         is the study of telephone
> Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet                                   etiquette.
> Duesseldorf
> e-mail: franz@ze8.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de         (in: Fromkin/Rodman)
> ##############################################################################
From: marten@feki.toppoint.de (Marten Feldtmann)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: ST/V-PM 1.4: problems ... :-)
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 92 15:30:51 GMT
Organization: Private Site

marten@feki.toppoint.de writes in article <715102030snx@feki.toppoint.de>:

> Well, ipfc the compiler for the help files will not accept "redraw:" !
> It seems to be, that it does not like the ":"-character.

 The online documentation tells me, that after "id=" one has to use
"alphabetic characters".

 MF



--
Marten Feldtmann                         E-Mail: marten@tpki.toppoint.de
2300 Kiel 14,    Kieler Str. 29,   Tel.: 0431-731916,   

Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: slangley@constant.demon.co.uk (Simon Langley)
Subject: GNU smalltalk under SVR4
Organization: Home
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 19:20:23 GMT

Has anyone successfully ported GNU smalltalk 1.1.1 to SVR4.  I have got
mst compiled although when I started it I got:
  .
  .
  .
Processing CFuncs.st
Processing Autoload.st
"GC flipping to space 1...copied space = 23.6%...done"
Smalltalk 1.1.1 Ready

st>

but the docs say that it should say 100%.  Does this matter?

The main problem I have is with stix; when I run 'mst -Vi' I get:
Floating exception

Can anyone help?

-- 
   Simon Langley                   (preferred)   slangley@constant.demon.co.uk
   Hampstead, London                             slangley@cix.compulink.co.uk
From: curzon@trooa.enet.dec.com (Richard Curzon)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Window Builder
Date: 31 Aug 92 19:42:52 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


More comments about Window Builder for ST/V Windows.

I too have Window Builder and I agree it's a great productivity tool 
especially if you are at the beginning stages of Smalltalk and/or Windows.  
The more experienced you are the less you will need WB; you may find it 
restricts you in the way you want to relate objects by its defaults.  

If you are low on free memory or if you want to keep your class structure
lean and mean, you may decide you don't want it; it adds at least 500K to
your image, probably double that if you order the SubPanes (fancy 3D
controls and guages, etc. that you can order extra).  Even if you have free
memory, ST/V Windows is notorious for slowing down as the image gets
bigger.  On my 316sx, there's a noticable speed slowdown.  If you've got a
muscle machine, no problem....

                                Richard Curzon, Digital Equipment of Canada
				Toronto
   (from INTERNET)     curzon@trooa.ENET.dec.com 
   (from COMPUSERVE)   71371,2521  OR  >INTERNET:curzon@trooa.ENET.dec.com
From: mpreeve@gummo.wi.edu (Mary Pat Reeve)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: MacSocket calls
Date: 4 Sep 92 15:29:43 GMT
Organization: Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research



Have any of you St-80 4.1 programmers written the equivalent
of UnixSock.st for MacTCP or one of the other Mac socket libraries?
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner)
Subject: Terminal Emulator usage?
Organization: University of Western Ont, London
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 19:19:21 GMT

   I might as well hit the group up for two requests in a row.  First,
however, thanks to everyone who assisted in getting me going in the right
direction over the last few months.  I'm gradually making progress, and
actually am understanding most of what I'm doing.  Your collective help
has been very valuable to me.  (You all know who you are.)

   I'm about to start examining the terminal emulator which comes as a
part of Objectkit\Smalltalk Advanced Programming User's guide.  I have
been able to acquire a window using the "advanced" launcher, but I need
to connect to the terminal input and output streams from my application.
(Actually I want to rlogin or telnet or rshell to several systems which
support tcp/ip, in order to request information periodically from each.
The information will be used to keep my smalltalk model current.)  It
appears to me (the novice) that the terminal emulator is the easiest way
to accomplish this.

   The User's Guide says it can be done, but is not very explicit.  (ie it
isn't a cookbook.)  It is probable (I hope) that one of you has done this
before, and I'd prefer not to re-invent (though I want to sweat enough to
understand any code I acquire :-).

   If you have done this sort of thing and can help me out, please drop
me a note.  Thanks,  b.
--
Brent Sterner                       Manager, Academic Technical Support
Fast:       <BRENT@uwo.ca>          <129.100.2.13>
Telephone:  (519)661-2151 x 6036    Fax:   (519)661-3486
Slow:  Computing & Communications Services, Natural Sciences Building
       The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 5B7
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: brent@uwovax.uwo.ca (Brent Sterner)
Subject: Cannot examine Objectkit AP messages
Organization: University of Western Ont, London
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 20:11:43 GMT

   Well, as I threatened yesterday, I started to examine the Advanced
Programming Terminal Emulator.  That is I tried, but something is in
the way.  In fact, I cannot select any method in any AP class.  When
I try, I receive a diagnostic window:

	Unhandled exception: Subscript out of bounds: 0
	---------------
	ByteString(Object)>>subscriptBoundsError:
	ByteString(Object)>>basicAt:
	ByteString(ByteEncodedString)>>byteAt:
	ByteString(ByteEncodedString)>>at:
	ByteString>>at:

   The interesting thing is that I can *use* the components; I just can't
examine them to see how they work.  Suggestions please.  Thank you.  b.
--
Brent Sterner                       Manager, Academic Technical Support
Fast:       <BRENT@uwo.ca>          <129.100.2.13>
Telephone:  (519)661-2151 x 6036    Fax:   (519)661-3486
Slow:  Computing & Communications Services, Natural Sciences Building
       The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada  N6A 5B7
From: marten@feki.toppoint.de (Marten Feldtmann)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: ST/V-PM 1.4: problems ... :-)
Distribution: world
Date: Sat, 29 Aug 92 15:27:10 GMT
Organization: Private Site

marten@feki.toppoint.de writes in article <715099969snx@feki.toppoint.de>:

 And the next problem:

 How to insert Online-Help in your application, page 84 in the same
book. Here one can read:

"
 * SubPanes -- Use the #getContents selector for the pane:

  :h1 id=redraw:. Help For 15 Puzzle
"

Well, ipfc the compiler for the help files will not accept "redraw:" !
It seems to be, that it does not like the ":"-character.

 Any way to go around this ???

 MF

--
Marten Feldtmann                         E-Mail: marten@tpki.toppoint.de
2300 Kiel 14,    Kieler Str. 29,   Tel.: 0431-731916,   

Xref: sparky comp.lang.smalltalk:1760 comp.lang.eiffel:1107 comp.object:3392
From: sm86+@andrew.cmu.edu (Stefan Monnier)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.object
Subject: Re: Future Issues of Object Orientation
Date: 2 Sep 92 12:36:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: andrew.4edGKl200aw5A224Ae
	<fyknv==.nagle@netcom.com>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Junior, Math/Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

Excerpts from netnews.comp.lang.eiffel: 2-Sep-92 Re: Future Issues of
Object.. John Nagle@netcom.com (1125)

> sm86+@andrew.cmu.edu (Stefan Monnier) writes:
> >In fact, I believe that speed increase will mainly become possible with
> >special hardware: since current processors are specifically designed
> >to run C like programs, it seems normal that different language 
> >paradigms can't really rivalise ! (see functional programming on a
> >data-flow machine)
>       Unclear.  That was the premise behind Symbolics and their LISP
> machines.  It turned out, though, that simple RISC machines with a decent
> compiler run Common LISP with substantially better price/performance than
> Symbolics' refrigerator-sized machines.  (Is Symbolics still in business,
> by the way?)  Lisp Machines Incorporated went bankrupt years ago.
> But Lucid is still selling LISP compilers for Sun machines.  Vanilla hardware 
> seems to win out.

> 					John Nagle


Well, I admit that Symbolics is a failure BUT: it was not a real
data flow computer: it was rather an adaptation of traditional
processor to the LISP language (and not to a style of language).
It was kind of specialized processor: no outlet !
Data flow computing is still alive (with supercomputers, for
example)

Furthermore, traditional processors are much more mature than
current data-flow technology !
That's partly why I believe that a new kind of 'processor' is necessary
to fully use OOL: don't forget that OO's first idea is to put together
code and data. But actual architectures (von Neumann) clearly
separate code from data (or rather: processing from data)

Higher speeds may be reached by moving part (or more) of the actual
processing to the memory. It is not a new idea: concurrent OO exist
that consider every object as a task, what would be turned in 'every
object a processor' in a parallel architecture !
This is a way that seems very interesting to me: a lot of small
processors (with associated memory) with each running an 
'object-process' !

Of course, I'm sure that the future will prove me wrong: either by
domination of improved traditional technology or by much more 
innovative designs !


	Stefan Monnier

-----------------------------------------------------
-- On the average, people seem to be acting normal --
-----------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: Sumantri
Subject: X-Runner problem on ST-80
Organization: Prodigy Technologies Corp
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 18:36:05 GMT

Has anybody run into a X-runner problem on ST-80 where X-runner will NOT
regonize the pop up window? 
I just wonder how X-runner can regonize a pop up window such as "OK" button.
I am realy appreciate for any comment.


ps: is there any X-runner hotline or news group?

Thanks
- Adi
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: mjb@netcom.com (Martin Brown)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V Win questions
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 92 06:19:21 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)

In article <l9qgbgINNsff@spim.mips.com> rsage@mips.com writes:
>I have a couple questions re: V/Win. I just got 2.0 and am doing the initial
>analysis.
>
>1 - Which (if any) commercial applications available retail are written in
>	Smalltalk/V? (preferably V/Win)

>
>2 - Has anybody used Cooper & Peters Window Builder/V 2.0? (or previous 
>	versions) They are selling Window Builder & Subpanes for $199
>	bundled together until the end of August. From the fliers, it
>	looks like an indespensible interface builder.
>
>Thanks.
>
>russ

A couple of things about Window Builder.

If your very new to smalltalk, you may not know enough to use WB easily
or understand what it is doing.

Rather than having to build a parser to deal with the infinite varieties of
users' 'open' methods, WB "requires" users to startup programs the WB way:

     leave the 'open' method to WB, don't modify it yourself...
     move your initialization code to preInitWindow and initWindow methods.

Also, the code the WB produces in its 'open' methods is non-standard and
peculiar, and not easily decipherable, which is OK as long as you continue
to use WB to modify and revise your code over time.  If you program code
gets passed around a group for revisioning, everyone in the group should
probably be using WB, too.

Undoubtedly, WB makes coding the GUI parts easier, especially if you make
many different programs ( as opposed to  making a few programs your forever
tweaking), but I'm not entirely convinced its for every ST programmer.
Of course, what is?  And the price is right.

Having said all of the above, I must say that I've owned WB since version 1.
-- 

                                   - mjb -

                                mjb@netcom.com

Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: peterg@netcom.com (Peter Goodall)
Subject: Re: Which coding technique is "correct"?
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 15:12:46 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

voss@cs.uiuc.edu (Bill Voss) writes:

[...]

>My first inclination would be to simply add an instance variable to
>class disk, and specify the disk size at instance creation.

>My second choice would be to create a subclass of disk for every kind
>of disk, in which case I would normally use a constant method to
>return the size.  (For floppy disk drives I'ld return 0 if the drive
>was empty, and ^(floppy capacity) if a disk was inserted.)

>I wouldn't use a class variable because the size seems to always be
>either static, or unique to the instance.  I can't think of any time I
>would want to change the capacity for all instances of the class at
>run time.  If you can think of such a case, then do use a class
>variable for that class.

>-Bill Voss

IMHO a separate class for each type of disk would be quite reasonable. I f
you are using PArcplace Smalltalk or the ENVY version of /VPM /VWIN you can
use class instance variables to maintain variables with unique values for
each subclass. Class instance variables are instance variables for the
class, a new slot is created for each subclass, rather than being shared
like class variables. Digitalk also has some extension code that you can
use to add class instance variables to their systems. Though you might have
to be persistant to get them to remember that they have it.

Class instance variables apparently were part of the standard syle for
avoiding Globals at Tektronix. Thanks to Jan Steinman for introducing me to
them. They were something I was continually needed but didn't know the name
for.

Peter Goodall -- peterg@netcom.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk