On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 6:32 AM, Philippe Marschall <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 06.01.2012 06:41, Gerry Weaver wrote: > >> Hello All, >> >> Firstly, let me say that I am enjoying Pharo very much at this point. I >> wish I would have found the time to look at this a long time ago. >> >> I have a few misc. newbie questions. >> >> 1. VisualWorks - I am doing a lot of thinking about projects that I >> could use Smalltalk on. I have a consulting project coming up that might >> be a good candidate, but I'm sure I would be required to use a >> commercial Smalltalk version for it. I guess it may be odd to ask about >> VisualWorks on this list, but I'm not really looking for a comparison to >> Pharo. What I'm interested in is your opinion of the product. I would >> like to know if any of you would consider using it on a project. I would >> appreciate anything y'all could share in the form of experiences good or >> bad. I am trying to get my hands on it, but Cincom's mail server >> (windoze) is having issues. I am also having some trouble getting >> pricing out of them. Anyway, I would like to get your take on the Cincom >> products. >> >> >> 2. There appear to be some tool choices in the Pharo image. I would like >> to be able to create a class and it's methods in an editor in one go. I >> like being able to see all of the class code at once. Is there a way to >> do this? I just want to be able to type it all in and accept (evaluate?) >> all at once. >> >> 3. I've seen some discussion about images and image sizes. What is the >> current state of this. Is it possible to strip an image down to just the >> required components for an application (ie; no world menu, etc.). I >> would like to be able to run an image that would bring my gui >> application up filling the image window such that it looks a close as >> possible to a conventional gui application. >> >> 4. I have been reading about something called "Opentalk". It is a way >> for images to be able to comminucate with each other over the network. >> I've also seen something callesd "rST" that appears to do a similar >> thing. In addition, I notice that someone has done some FFI bindings for >> zeromq. What would y'all recommend as the best option to achieve >> something like this in Pharo? >> >> 5. I'm trying to figure out exactly what the Pharo gui toolkit provides >> in the way of widgets. Is there a widget gallery type thing somewhere >> that shows all of them? I know I can play with them in the image, but it >> would be nice to see a list of what is there with a brief description. >> >> 6. I know Pharo doesn't currently support OS threads in an image, but >> I'm wondering about the FFI. Is it possible to call a foreign function >> in a separate OS thread or asynchronously in Pharo? >> > > My understanding is with the very latest mt Cog VMs that FFI call-outs > happen in a native OS thread. I'm not sure whether the required > infrastructure is already in Pharo. > That's the idea in the MT (multi-threaded) VMs. But its not the case in the standard VM. This makes all FFI calls from the VM thread, blocking the VM until the call returns or calls-back. N.B. the MT VMs are not yet production ready. > Cheers > Philippe > > > > -- best, Eliot
