"What does "not support" mean?  People have successfully deployed apps on
both iPhone and Android.  Pharo can not (easily) be developed on iPhone but
can be deployed there-on.  One can't develop iPhone apps on iPhone.  you
need a Mac for that.  Does that mean Apple don't support iPhone??
 "

I think you replied what support means. Support means that there is group
of people out there to support you with your problems on that platform.
Pharo does not officially release for those platforms and there are only a
couple of applications that I know that run on iOS both from the same
developer. So pretty much you are on your own.

"I disagree with 4.  If graphics are done by external libraries (and note
that even BitBlt in Pharo/Squeak is not implemented in Squeak, but in C)
graphics can be as fast in Pharo as in anything else."

It should not be a problem for an educational game anyway , I was talking
about games that are very demanding graphics wise. In those games most of
the code is most demanding anyway and so they use dynamic languages only
for scripting game logic .

"IMO this is a /really bad/ answer.  There are Pharo and Squeak apps
deployed on Android and iPhone.  The answer shouldn't be "this is a bad
idea", it should be "you can deploy natively like this..., or you can
deploy with a native UI and Smalltalk logic like this...".  But the answer
should never be "this is a bad idea".  Alas I don't spend my time deploying
apps so I don't know how to do it, only that people have (I have DrGeo on
my iPhone).  So can those that know please write an FAQ that answers
ralph's question?  I wish I could :-/"

Well let me put it  this way. Its been 12 hours since the OP has asked the
question and the only two people who answered the question are clueless
about these platforms. I think the situation verifies exactly the situation
I was describing in my reply.

"Kilon, please don't take this personally but someone could easily
interpret your answer as "you're better off programming in JavaScript.
 Pharo can't do deployment. "  That's both a terrible and an incorrect
answer.  I hope we can do much better."

I don't take it personally when people disagree with me, I find it
refreshing because I may learn something new.

No he cant interpet it like "Pharo can't do deployment" because I already
mentioned in my first reply that there are pharo apps distributed on iOS
and especially DrGeo is a really nice app that I have used. if he
interprets my post "you're better off programming in JavaScript" then yes
he would be exactly right. Because that was my intention. I also mentioned
Amber that is Smalltalk that compiles to Javascript so I think I did not
force him to consider only JS as an option.

By the way I would love to be proven wrong because I also would love to
develop for those platforms with Pharo but right now I dont feel confident
about it. As you said it there is not even documentation about the process.
I remember someone once posted instructions on how to compile Pharo on iOS
but people did not show much interest and it just disappeared.

Please prove me wrong !!!


On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Eliot Miranda <[email protected]>wrote:

> Hi Kilon, Hi Ralph,
>
> I wish I could answer with concrete information.  But that's not what I
> spend my time doing.  However, I need to correct the impression the
> following answers give.  I think they're discouraging to say the least.
>
> On Sat, May 10, 2014 at 2:03 PM, kilon alios <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> I am no Pharo expert but will try to answer with what I know
>>
>> 1) Pharo download is 16 mb compressed and 58 mb uncompressed.
>>
>
> and can be stripped.  It is easy to get a development environment into
> 16Mb (e.g. Newspeak).  Applications can easily fit in 16Mb.  Applications
> don't need to be deployed with sources or changes files.
>
>
>> 2) Pharo is a standalone and as such it does not need installation.
>> Everything you need is in a single folder contained in a single zip with a
>> single download. I dont think you can get any easier than that. So its a
>> single task.
>>
>
> But there are scripts to create platform-compatible installers on Mac OS
> and Win32 if that's what you want.
>
>
>>  3) There are people who run Pharo on iOS like DrGeo. But Pharo does not
>> support those platforms and most likely you will experience few problems
>> with it. So its some extra work but its doable. They do represent a larger
>> market and a very important one I agree.
>>
>
> What does "not support" mean?  People have successfully deployed apps on
> both iPhone and Android.  Pharo can not (easily) be developed on iPhone but
> can be deployed there-on.  One can't develop iPhone apps on iPhone.  you
> need a Mac for that.  Does that mean Apple don't support iPhone??
>
>
>> 4) Again I dont know the issues on those platforms but bare in mid, Pharo
>> is a dynamic language and dynamic language are definetly not a first choice
>> for those platforms for game because they are slower than official
>> supported languages. Those are in iOS ObjectiveC and on Android Java. All
>> that assuming your game has some demanding graphics. For simple graphics
>> with not much animation and such you should be ok.
>>
>
> I disagree with 4.  If graphics are done by external libraries (and note
> that even BitBlt in Pharo/Squeak is not implemented in Squeak, but in C)
> graphics can be as fast in Pharo as in anything else.
>
>
>>
>> Personally I think its not a good idea, because Pharo does not support
>> those platforms well. I think that in that scenario there is a better
>> alternative , that of Javascript + Pharo. Its possible to use JS as front
>> end and Pharo as backend. If you dont want to code in Js there is Amber.
>> Web apps are quite performant so you will be able to do some really
>> impressive graphics with this recipe. You will be using also technologies
>> that are well documented and well tested.
>>
>
> IMO this is a /really bad/ answer.  There are Pharo and Squeak apps
> deployed on Android and iPhone.  The answer shouldn't be "this is a bad
> idea", it should be "you can deploy natively like this..., or you can
> deploy with a native UI and Smalltalk logic like this...".  But the answer
> should never be "this is a bad idea".  Alas I don't spend my time deploying
> apps so I don't know how to do it, only that people have (I have DrGeo on
> my iPhone).  So can those that know please write an FAQ that answers
> ralph's question?  I wish I could :-/
>
>
>
>>
>> Also there are like a ton of game libraries for JS out there. Which will
>> lift the amount of work you will need to do for your game.
>>
>
> Kilon, please don't take this personally but someone could easily
> interpret your answer as "you're better off programming in JavaScript.
>  Pharo can't do deployment. "  That's both a terrible and an incorrect
> answer.  I hope we can do much better.
>
> --
> best,
> Eliot
>

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