HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: mike_r@nic.cerf.net (Mike Roberts)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Store image in disk ?
Date: 15 Dec 1992 19:00:32 GMT
Organization: CERFnet
NNTP-Posting-Host: nic.cerf.net

In article <1992Dec15.011126.1@sol.yorku.ca> ak202576@sol.yorku.ca writes:
>I am using DigitTalk's SmallTalk/V for Windows, is any one can advise me
>how can I store a object into disk and retrieve it back. 

There are two ways to do this :-

1) Use the storeOn: mechanism (look in Object) which iterates through
   an objects instance variables and recursive uses storeOn: and 
   printOn: to append an ascii (readable) representation of the object
   to the stream. Append to a FileStream to get the stuff onto disk.
   To get it back, you have to feed it throught the compiler via
   a doIt (file it in ??) mechanism. This implies that you have the
   compiler resident, it won't work at runtime. 

2) Use object filer, shipped as an extra for V/Windows and V/PM. This 
solves a lot of the problems of storeOn: mechanism and does things
like schema migration and fixing up references and back references
that a storeOn: mechanism wont do. You can use it at runtime, but in
its current incarnation it is dog slow. It is possible to make it 
faster, but for real speed you will need to write your own application
specific mechanism which uses knowledge about your object space to
cut down on the amount of refernce fixing up you are doing, which is the
real reason why object filer is slow. 

BTW, Object filer seems to run in a high order polynomial time, thus is
not suitable for use on large object networks unless you break them 
into little peices and save each one seperatly.


Mike

Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight)
Subject: Re: sinus Pi <> 0 in OW
Reply-To: knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight)
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 17:13:16 GMT

In <1992Dec15.140326.16048@heeg.de> hasko@heeg.de (Hasko Heinecke) writes:

>is tolerable. The reason why pocket calculators always return zero
>when you type Pi sin is:  they calculate more accurate than they
>admit, i.e. they round their results to the size of the display,
>but they calculate two digits more.

Functions like sin are normally computed using an approximation
function. For some values the function will be exact, but for most
there will be errors, kept below a bound which is judged acceptable.

The reason pocket calculators always return zero for sin(pi) is that
they carefully choose their approximation functions to give exact
values for the answers that people notice, Pi, Pi/2, Pi/4 etc.

People find a small deviation much less acceptable for an answer that
they feel should be exact (1.0, 0.0, 0.5) than for other values
(0.452372375874).

-- 
 Alan Knight  knight@mrco.carleton.ca  +1 613 788 2600x1027 
 Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering              
 Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 5B6      

Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: nholtz@cascade.carleton.ca (Neal Holtz)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V for Sun (Sparc)
Organization: none
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 21:52:09 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.183312.17246@ntmtv> irvine@ntmtv.UUCP (Chuck Irvine) writes:
>In article <SOEREN.92Dec17114524@cachalot.cs.tu-berlin.de>, soeren@cs.tu-berlin.de (Soeren Detering) writes:
>|> In-reply-to: glippert@dale.cts.com's message of Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:29:06 GMT
>|> [...]
>|> It exists an Objectworks(r)\Smalltalk, Release 4 (for Sparcs).
>
>True, but my Smalltalk/V for Windows application is far from portable to
>S/T80.

Unless Digitalk has changed their philosophy a lot, your Smalltalk/V for Windows
application probably won't be portable to any other Smalltalk/V implementation.


--
Prof. Neal Holtz,  Dept. of Civil Eng.,  Carleton University,  Ottawa,  Canada
Internet: nholtz@civeng.carleton.ca  Ph: (613)788-2600x5797 Fax: (613)788-3951
From: frerk@telematik.informatik.uni-karlsruhe.de (Frerk Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: sinus Pi <> 0 in OW
Date: 15 Dec 92 10:06:19
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: loophole.telematik.informatik.uni-karlsruhe.de
In-reply-to: hein@vtm.be's message of Mon, 14 Dec 1992 16:29:07 GMT


Double pi sin evaluates to 0.0d on a DECstation 5000/25
and not 1.2246063538224d-16.
So what you see is nothing but the normal rounding error, floating
point calculation always has. You could cheat or tune your floating
point package for some special cases, but you would miss some other or
make them worse. Always keep in mind not to compare floating point
numbers with '='.

--
Frerk Meyer <frerk@tk.telematik.informatik.uni-karlsruhe.de>  -+
Portnoy@irc             "Do the ride thing!"                 o>o
From: penning@sumax.seattleu.edu (Mat Penning)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Long windows and scrolling
Date: 11 Dec 92 23:16:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: sumax.6081
Organization: Seattle University, Seattle, WA

From article <1992Dec7.230952.21091@netcom.com>, by altinbay@netcom.com (John Altinbay):
> In the application I am writing, I have a need to have a lot of
> information appear on a window which, for various reasons, can't
> be done in something like a ListBox or some kind of text pane.
> (There's spreadsheets embedded, for example.)

You might try a GraphPa.. - it has vertical and horizontal scroll bars by
default.

> I'm also having trouble with the WinConstants, like WsHscroll.
> Whenever I try to write a method with any of them, I'm asked if 
> I want to make them globals!

You need to add WinConstants to the list of pool dictionaries for the class 
(there is an empty list you can add to if you look at the class definition).
From: cshaver@informix.com (Craig Shaver)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: anything isKindOf: nil ==> true (Objectwork
Date: 12 Dec 92 19:25:53 GMT
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.

In article <1992Dec11.141556.7961@hasler.ascom.ch> steinman@hslrswi.hasler.ascom.ch writes:
>In article 723917157@cunews, knight@mrco.carleton.ca (Alan Knight) writes:
...
>>Due to the way inheritsFrom: is implemented, the expression
>>
>>  anObject isKindOf: nil
>>
>>evaluates to true for any object...
>
>As I recall, this has been true since at least Smalltalk-80 V1 (ca. 1982).
>
..................
>
>In anyplace I've worked, discovery of #isKindOf: subjects one to the Spanish
>Inquisition. Sure, there are exceptions, but I've *never* seen code that I
>could not improve by getting rid of #isKindOf:. Unfortunately, it is usually
>a symptom of non-object design, and can be difficult to purge!
>
>---
>: : Jan Steinman, Bytesmiths			   steinman@hasler.ascom.ch : :
>: : 2002 Parkside Court, West Linn, OR 97068-2767 USA	    +1 503 657 7703 : :
>: : Beundenfeldstrasse 35, CH-3013, Bern, Switzerland	    +41 31 42 47 11 : :

This one always gets to me.  All the good quick and dirty OOP examples show
a case statement being replaced by an elegant O-O solution.  Then I see
#isKindOf solutions that look like case or if-then-else code in Smalltalk.
There is always another object lurking in there.  I have not found them that
difficult to purge in practice.

#isKindOf is kind of like GOTO, is kind of dangerous.
-- 
Craig Shaver  (cshaver@informix.com for now) (415)390-0654 (415)926-6407
Productivity Group POB 60458 Sunnyvale, CA  94088
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: glippert@dale.cts.com (George Lippert)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V for Sun (Sparc)
Organization: Titan Linkabit Corporation
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:29:06 GMT

Chuck Irvine (irvine@ntmtv.UUCP) wrote:
> I vaguely seem to recall hearing something about Digitalk doing a port
> of ST/V for the Sun Sparc. Does anyone know if there's any substance to
> this? Any information is much appreciated. Thanks

I talked with Digitalk about two days ago (I wanted them to port to the NeXT)
and they told me that they where making their first foray into the world of
Unix and that, based on user demand, they were going for the IBM RS/6000!  No
definite plans about further platforms.

You can call them at

* Digitalk, Smalltalk, Los Angeles 310.337.3135

--
George A. Lippert           work:          glippert@dale.cts.com
Titan Satellite Systems     home: zucchini!glippert@dale.cts.com (NeXTmail ok)
San Diego, CA                                            
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: soeren@cs.tu-berlin.de (Soeren Detering)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V for Sun (Sparc)
Organization: TU Berlin (FB 20)
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 10:45:41 GMT

In-reply-to: glippert@dale.cts.com's message of Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:29:06 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V for Sun (Sparc)
Distribution: 
> Chuck Irvine (irvine@ntmtv.UUCP) wrote:
> > I vaguely seem to recall hearing something about Digitalk doing a port
> > of ST/V for the Sun Sparc. Does anyone know if there's any substance to
> > this? Any information is much appreciated. Thanks
> 
> [...]
> Unix and that, based on user demand, they were going for the IBM RS/6000!  No
> definite plans about further platforms.

It exists an Objectworks(r)\Smalltalk, Release 4 (for Sparcs).

Greetings
Soeren

-- 
     __o      Soeren Detering
   _`\<,_     Berlin, Germany              Die Wuerde des Menschen haengt
  (_)/ (_)    soeren@cs.tu-berlin.de       von Angebot und Nachfrage ab.
------------
From: peterg@netcom.com (Peter Goodall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Bug-Fixes for Digitalk products: where?
Date: 16 Dec 92 00:47:56 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

mjb@netcom.com (Martin Brown) writes:

>marten@feki.toppoint.de (Marten Feldtmann) writes:

>> Is there any FTP-site (or e-Mail server), where I can get these
>>bugfixes also? I bought products from Digitalk and not from CompuServe,
>>

>There is already a smalltalk archive site: st.cs.uiuc.edu

>There is a directory for Digitalk software at this site: pub/st_v (?)

>Though I haven't checked recently, there are not too many files in st_v.
>Awhile back, I uploaded a .zip file with some changes for Window Builder.
>I don't believe there have been too many updates from Digitalk itself.

>I have had electronic communications with Dan Goldman on Digitalk's internet
>presence.  The results of which have given me hope that Digitalk will eventually
>have a direct presence on the net.  Don't hold your breath.  I believe that
>they're scared they'll stretch their support staff too thin with another
>support outlet.  I offered to be a conduit for their fixes getting to the net
>archives, but the offer was declined with a thankyou.
[...]

I spoke to Dan Goldman at OOPSLA, and asked him if I could put the stuff onto 
Compuserve. He said that would be ok, and would even write me a letter to
say so. Problem is I'm movving to the East coast and may not have a net
connection for a month or so. They have the Instantiations pople at
portland - they maintian digitalk.com. So realy it should be easiest for
them to mail the stuff to archives.

The point is that Digitalk will give permission, and someone with
Compuserve and Internet accounts could do the work.


Peter Goodall -- peterg@netcom.com
From: wayne@schaefer.math.wisc.edu (Rick Wayne)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: UI question for ST/V DOS gurus
Date: 15 Dec 92 00:28:32 GMT
Organization: Univ. of Wisconsin Dept. of Mathematics

i have a project for which i'm considering digitalk smalltalk/v dos.
we have an older version, and have ordered the latest.  

our app has to run on PCs without mice or other pointing devices, so
we need to provide good accessibility to the mouse-impaired.  from what
i've seen, the environment itself is crazy-making w/o a mouse.  are apps
built with ST/V DOS necessarily the same way?  i know that we could put
together UI mechanisms to handle keyboard input, but i'm much more 
interested in buying than building.

i'm also interested in providing your garden variety menu bar to the
users of the program.  the app will see only infrequent (though regular)
use, and i want to provide them with as standard an interface as i can.
while i have no problems personally with a UI that asks me to remember
to pop up menus (and pops up different ones depending on where the cursor
is), i know that our users would have the screaming heebie-jeebies.  or,
to be more precise, our support staff would.

thanks!

rick
From: jeff@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Jeff McAffer)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Wanted - midi driver for 4.0/4.1 on  mac
Date: 17 Dec 92 15:43:39 GMT
Reply-To: jeff@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Organization: University of Tokyo, tcejorP Project.

In article <1gojbrINNlv8@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> claude@cse.ucsc.edu (Claude Noshpitz) writes:

 >Hi - i'm looking for a midi driver for the mac on Objectworks smalltalk
 >that would work either via serial or with midi manager .. any help or
 >pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Me too.  Actually, for me any platform would be fine.  In fact, any
music or sound stuff in ST would be fine.  Heck, I'll take anything.

Please post, mail, ftp whatever.


--
--
ato de, |m        -- Santa or Satan?  Think about it.
From: peterg@netcom.com (Peter Goodall)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: ST/V PM problems
Date: 16 Dec 92 00:59:05 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest)

dugerdil@uni2a.unige.ch writes:

>Dear Netters,

>As I run into problems with ST/V 1.4 on OS/2 every day, I wonder if
>someone on the net is experiencing the same kind of problem.
>I run ST/V PM version 1.4 on OS/2 2.0. From time to time the Smalltalk
>system simply closes without any warning (but OS/2 does not crash). We
>also have problems with I/O's: when saving source code into files, the
>systems add some garbage at the end of the file (usually the end part
>of the source code). As we experienced the same kind of problem with ENFIN/2 
>(although less frequently) I would guess the problem is not that of ST/V...

>When working under windows (ST/V 2.0) I was accustomed to work in a very
>robust system. But I must admit that under OS/2 the system is much less
>reliable.

>Could that be a problem of OS/2 ?
>Would the problems come from the fact that we run the 16 bit version of ST/V
>under the 32 bit version of ST/V ?
>Is the OS/2 versions of ST/V definitely less robust than the Windows version ?

Youve run into the 16MB limit of 16 bit applications under os/2 2.0

The problem can be reporoduced by allocating 10k ByteArrays and  saving
them in an Array. If you write the current allocation amount to a file and
flush the file each time. You'll see the size at crash time.

/VPM 2.0 also crashes, but only after swap space is exhausted. There should
be an interrupt from the VM when memory is in the danger zone.

Also refactor your classes, chances are that your system is bigger than it
should be.

PEter Goodall -- peterg@netcom.com
From: v075pcah@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Dinesh K. Sukumaran)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: FOR  Andrew Valencia -  reg doc.ps  files
Date: 17 Dec 92 16:38:00 GMT
Organization: University at Buffalo
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41


Sorry  to take up  the  bandwidth.

I  misplaced Andrew Valencia's  (from Valencia  Consulting)
email address. If anyone has the email address, please  send it
to  me.


If  Andrew Valencia is reading this  message, here is my problem:

I received your doc.ps  file in 4  parts on "A Tutorial in
GNU Smalltalk". However,  the  file does not print beyond page  10.
I  used  a postscript previewer to look  at the file: it also
reports  error after displaying 0.33 of page 11.  Could  you
please  let  me know,  what  the problem is? Or, could you 
please re-send the  files?

By the way, the first  10 pages look   great.

Thanks,

--Dinesh

   --------------------------------------------------------------
   Dinesh K. Sukumaran    Tel:   (716)-829-3147
   Dept. of Chemistry     Fax:   (716)-829-2960
   9 Acheson Hall         email: chedinsh@ubvmsc.cc.buffalo.edu
   SUNY at Buffalo               dinesh@hohaha.chem.buffalo.edu
   Buffalo, NY 14214             v075pcah@ubvmsc.bitnet
   _____________________________________________________________
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: mjb@netcom.com (Martin Brown)
Subject: Re: Bug-Fixes for Digitalk products: where?
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services (408 241-9760 guest)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 05:46:06 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.004756.15504@netcom.com> peterg@netcom.com (Peter Goodall) writes:
>mjb@netcom.com (Martin Brown) writes:
>
>>marten@feki.toppoint.de (Marten Feldtmann) writes:
>
>>> Is there any FTP-site (or e-Mail server), where I can get these
>>>bugfixes also? I bought products from Digitalk and not from CompuServe,
>>>
>
>>There is already a smalltalk archive site: st.cs.uiuc.edu
>

          [ stuff deleted ]


>>support outlet.  I offered to be a conduit for their fixes getting to the net
>>archives, but the offer was declined with a thankyou.
>[...]
>
>I spoke to Dan Goldman at OOPSLA, and asked him if I could put the stuff onto 
>Compuserve. He said that would be ok, and would even write me a letter to
 ^^^^^^^^^^
   you mean internet, don't you?

>say so. Problem is I'm movving to the East coast and may not have a net
>connection for a month or so. They have the Instantiations pople at
>portland - they maintian digitalk.com. So realy it should be easiest for
>them to mail the stuff to archives.
>
>The point is that Digitalk will give permission, and someone with
>Compuserve and Internet accounts could do the work.
>
>
>Peter Goodall -- peterg@netcom.com

I didn't mean to suggest that Digitalk wasn't interested in getting their stuff
into the archives.

I have been in contact with Bill Voss, the archive site maintainer, and he has
brought up an idea which could lead to a better archive vis-a-vis Digitalk and
st_v files.

In any case, the holidays are too close to change the status quo.

I look forward to a better and up-to-date archive come the New Year.

-- 

                                   - mjb -

                                mjb@netcom.com
From: penning@sumax.seattleu.edu (Mat Penning)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: Circular stack in Smalltalk?
Date: 17 Dec 92 03:50:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: sumax.1gqlmgINN83i
Organization: Seattle University
NNTP-Posting-Host: sumax.seattleu.edu

From article <1992Dec13.185110.19334@news.ysu.edu>, by ae769@yfn.ysu.edu (Ritesh Patel):
> 
> I need help in implementing a circular stack in smalltalk. I have access
> to a class called OrderedCollection. This type of stack is also
> called double-ended queue. I am new to this language so please pardon my
> ignorance.

I'm not sure why you would want a circular stack. The only time I have seen a 
use for one of these things is in C or some other compiled language, when for
some reason you want to use a fixed piece of memory (like a static array or
such) for storing the elements of the stack. An OrderedCollection, the way I
understand it, will give you the same functionality as a double ended queue.
Under ST/V for Windows, an OrderedCollection has methods addFirst, addLast,
removeFirst, removeLast. It will grow dynamically, but if that is what you are
trying to avoid you could subclass it and add your own addFirst and add Last
methods that first check the number of elements to see if it is "full".

Good luck!
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: jahonen@cs.joensuu.fi (Jarmo Ahonen)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V for Sun (Sparc)
Organization: University of Joensuu
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 06:21:47 GMT

nholtz@cascade.carleton.ca (Neal Holtz) writes:

>In article <1992Dec17.183312.17246@ntmtv> irvine@ntmtv.UUCP (Chuck Irvine) writes:
>>In article <SOEREN.92Dec17114524@cachalot.cs.tu-berlin.de>, soeren@cs.tu-berlin.de (Soeren Detering) writes:
>>|> In-reply-to: glippert@dale.cts.com's message of Wed, 16 Dec 1992 21:29:06 GMT
>>|> [...]
>>|> It exists an Objectworks(r)\Smalltalk, Release 4 (for Sparcs).
>>
>>True, but my Smalltalk/V for Windows application is far from portable to
>>S/T80.

>Unless Digitalk has changed their philosophy a lot, your Smalltalk/V for Windows
>application probably won't be portable to any other Smalltalk/V implementation.

From my Smalltalk/V v2.0 for OS/2 manuals one can read that they have
largely improved the overall portability between ST/V Windows and ST/V OS/2.
Those environments should provide quite good portability for general stuff
(no special PM/WPS or windoze interfaces...). Even most of the user-interface
things seem to be portable... But this is only my impression, not real 
experience (I have only played with my friend's windoze version, personally
I use the OS/2 version).

Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: Joerg Beekmann <jbeekman@prodigy.bc.ca>
Subject: Self: where can I find it
Organization: Prodigy Technologies Corp.
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.0
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 19:13:59 GMT

A while ago there was an anouncement of the availability of Self.
Any pointers to where I can find it would be aprieciated.
Many thanks

Joerg
From: irvine@ntmtv.UUCP (Chuck Irvine)
Subject: Re: Smalltalk/V for Sun (Sparc)
Organization: Northern Telecom Inc, Mountain View, CA
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 20:58:10 GMT


|> >
|> >True, but my Smalltalk/V for Windows application is far from portable to
|> >S/T80.
|> 
|> Unless Digitalk has changed their philosophy a lot, your Smalltalk/V for Windows
|> application probably won't be portable to any other Smalltalk/V implementation.

Huh? Don't they actually advertise cross platform compatibility? I know I would
have to recompile and port any Windows specific stuff, but I thought
the port would relatively easy. I gather that in your experience this isn't
necessarily so? Your input is appreciated.

Chuck Irvine
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
From: nagle@netcom.com (John Nagle)
Subject: Re: ST80 is getting bigger
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 18:34:23 GMT

bruce@utafll.uta.edu (Bruce Samuelson) writes:
>Perhaps the next steps in Smalltalk's evolution should include: 
>(1) support for beginners to browse useful subsets of Smalltalk while
>postponing exposure to some of the gore; 
>(2) a better tutorial; 
>(3) movement towards more modularity somehow--sooner or later, the large,
>monolithic image will become unwieldy; 
      This is the problem that killed the big LISP systems, like Interlisp
and to some extent the Symbolics machines.  There's just too much stuff
in one workspace.  In any project involving more than one programmer,
the primary form of the source will not be a workspace; it will be something
that multiple people can share and update in a controlled way.  Smalltalk
is designed around the workspace as primary, and this does not scale up well.
>(4) a package mechanism or
>something to partition the name space of classes and selectors; 
>(5) performance enhancements.
       Is anyone working on a non-naive Smalltalk system?  Type
inference, object-oriented code hoisting, and strength reduction for
the collection operators are all possibilities, as well as all the usual
optimizations for declarative languages.

>What would you users think if ParcPlace gave us a chance to catch our
>breath by focusing on enhancements to performance rather than
>functionality in the next release?

      Features sell.  Performance is secondary in the marketplace.

					John Nagle
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk