Happy first Equinox!

Posted in Naiad, Spoon on 22 March 2011 by Craig Latta

Happy spring or autumn!

Making a deadline for myself pushed me to spend more time on Spoon, hooray! A couple of host-OS issues took more time than I thought they would, boo!

In the previous Spoon release, the (headless) minimal object memory includes a tiny web server that, when visited with a host-OS web browser, welcomes you to Spoon and offers a few suggestions for getting started (e.g., how to load modules). This release augments that with minimal virtual filesystem support (it turned out to be WebDAV), so that you can use “your favorite text editor” to interact with the system (eliminating what is for me the most annoying reason why people don’t try Smalltalk). I did this last, and it took longer than I thought it would to pull this off on Microsoft Windows (and yet, I’m not surprised :).

In the meantime, please do comment on http://netjam.org/spoon/naiad if you haven’t already. Thanks!

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MacOS Context application created

Posted in Context, Spoon with tags on 28 January 2011 by Craig Latta

I’ve created the first of the platform-specific launching mechanisms for the Context 3 release on 20 March, a MacOS application. On each platform, launching an application starts the minimal subject and history memories, and opens a website served by the subject memory using your default web browser. You can then control the subject memory from that website (load modules, quit, etc.).

For MacOS, I wrote an Automator workflow which opens the memories with Finder commands from an AppleScript, and opens the website after that. I saved the workflow as an application, and put the processor (AKA “virtual machine”) and memories in its Resources. This was my first serious application of Automator or AppleScript; I’m impressed!

I’m also writing applications for Ubuntu Linux and Microsoft Windows. I’d appreciate any suggestions about mechanisms to use on those platforms. I’d also love contributions of prettier iconography. :)

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new Naiad memory visualization data

Posted in Naiad on 27 January 2011 by Craig Latta

minimal Naiad memory visualization, 2011-01-27

I’ve finished another manual pass through the minimal Naiad subject memory, and have generated another set of graph data for the Walrus 3D visualizer. There are 8,628 objects and 28,449 connections, in a memory that is 281,604 bytes in size. Try exploring around the space; please let me know if you find anything odd. :)  You can watch a sample exploration session, too:

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Naiad says hello

Posted in Naiad with tags on 26 January 2011 by Craig Latta

Phew. I have Naiad (Spoon’s change management system) running in a small headless memory which is using another small headless memory as its edit history. I call the first one the “subject” memory, and the second one the “history” memory. I’m browsing the subject memory from a kitchen-sink memory that has Naiad support. I can install class and method editions into the subject memory from the browsing memory, and the subject memory keeps track of edits in the history memory, all without referring to class names. Naiad finally works! Yay!

Eventually, the headless subject memory will be the basis of a new distribution of Squeak… one where there is no bloat, everything is organized sanely, and everything is documented. :)

We can port the Naiad support to other memories (other versions of Squeak, and other Smalltalks). So, for example, one will be able to browse a Pharo memory from a VisualWorks memory and vice-versa.

Right now I’m doing another manual removal pass through the headless subject memory, using visualization data from the simulator as my guide.

This is fun!

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This is the first message.

Posted in Uncategorized on 6 March 2009 by Craig Latta

Its only purpose is to show the appearance of this site. Thank you and good night.

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