On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 2:30 AM, Stephen Travis Pope < [email protected]> wrote:
> > Hello PharoDev, > Hi Stephen, > > I have a largish project (Siren) that I have developed in ST80/VisualWorks > (since 1984) and ported to Squeak in the past. > > I'm allows looking for a cleaner free ST80 implementation to host the > project. > I would love if Siren is ported to Pharo ;-) > > Looking at Pharo, it appears to me to be suffering the same bloat issues as > Squeak. > > I have a few questions: > > Why don't you all use a 6-paned browser (called the package browser in > Squeak) and control the introduction of top-level meta-categories? The > top-level (packages or meta-catgories) should be a list of 20 or fewer > topics such as Magnitudes, Collections, Graphics, Text, Compiler, Tools, > etc. and each of these should have 20 or fewer categories within it. I > ported the package browser to Squeak and reorganized their system once, but > people continued to add top-level categories to make finding their code > easier. I tried to add the facility to the Pharo browser a year or so ago, > and gave up because I couldn't figure how out how to subclass and refine > the > existing browser framework (and the fact that it seems to be under > construction). > There is no such tools in Pharo, but you can use the filter to see only the package you want. You may have a look to the AltBrowser of Thierry Goubier : http://thierrygoubier.github.io/AltBrowser/ There is a hierarchical view like the one you want. Normally you can load directement AltBrowser from Pharo 3.0/4.0: launch the configuration browser and select AltBrowser. > > Why do you still use the (terrible, IMHO) Squeak graphics and UI packages > (Morphic, Balloon, etc)? It appears that new mostly-redundant systems are > still being added to replace these, right? Can't someone reimplement the > VisualWorks "Wrapper" UI framework (or something like it) on top of OpenGL > contexts as in VW? It's help up pretty well after over 25 years. (David > Leibs and I toasted it just last December in Australia.) > > If you want to build interface, you don't have to use Morphic, etc ... You can use Spec : http://spec.st/ > How does a newbie learn what all the new packages are for? Glamour, Ring, > AsmJit, Zinc, etc. are neat names, but if they're not part of higher-level > packages it makes navigating the system (and even figuring out what they're > for) pretty difficult. > Glamour is part of MOOSE image : http://www.moosetechnology.org/ This is a DSL to build browser You may have a look to the ongoing books. There is some documentation about all these framework: https://ci.inria.fr/pharo-contribution/view/Books/ > > Are there any benchmarks of the current VMs compared to VisualWorks? The > last time I used Squeak (a few years ago) it was still pretty slow. I have > a > real-time event scheduler in Siren that I use to schedule MIDI, so I can > run > "drum roll" tests to see how the VM performs. > > Pharo and Squeak use basically the same VM. When you use Squeak, this was the stack VM or the newer one called Cog ? There will be a new VM called Spur with even more performances during the year. > How does Pharo handle user primitives or foreign function calls? Is anyone > maintaining the old SWIG implementation of Smalltalk? I used it quite a bit > to have Smalltalk code create and manage C++ signal processing graphs in > the > past. SWIG is still going strong, and it's embarrassing that there's no > mention at all of Smalltalk on the SWIG pages. > > There is many FFI engines at the moment. This problem was discussed during last PharoDays and there will be an action to have one unified FFI. > > I'm not trying to start a fight, and I really did like the initial Pharo > mission statement of making a tighter, cleaner open-source ST80 > implementation. Is that dream still what motivates the community? > If yes, where are the minimalists hiding? > There are still there, but it takes a lot of time to clean the implementation. One new statement of Pharo is to reinvent the UI also. There are some ongoing experiments with the GT-Tools: http://gt.moosetechnology.org/ Regards, -- Serge Stinckwich UCBN & UMI UMMISCO 209 (IRD/UPMC) Every DSL ends up being Smalltalk http://www.doesnotunderstand.org/
