Smalltalk Solutions 2007 Call for Participation

The Smalltalk Solutions 2007 Call for Participation is now available at http://www.lwnwexpo.plumcom.ca/smalltalk_cfp.cfm

XML Notepad 2007

Microsoft has released XML Notepad 2007.
It's really a nice tool to view and edit xml.
There is a nice article on MSDN about it. Note that it requires .NET

Seaside Parasol - another seaside hosting page

Beside the well known http://www.seasidehosting.st there is now an additional offering for hosting seaside applications called "Seaside Parasol".

Chris Cunnington provides a commercial web host for Smalltalk there. Just click on http://www.seasideparasol.com.



There is also the so called "Beach Club" a monthly pub night to talk about all things Smalltalk.

Exupery 0.10 for Windows and Linux

Exupery 0.10 is released, now on Windows and Linux

Exupery is a compiler written in Squeak Smalltalk that compiles bytecodes to machine code.

Scratch Progress

I already reported about Scratch project back in May 2005.

Meanwhile the project made some progress and a beta version is available for download. You can also have a look at some movies introducing the system.

Scratch is written in Squeak. It's interesting that the image is only 6MB in size. The virtual machine is a 3.4.3/Tea 1.9 VM. The system is very responsive even when loading large images and sounds.



I also like the Scratch user interface - it looks much better than Squeaks default one. Would be interesting to know if it is a custom one or a modified Morphic system. Remembers me a little bit on the nice UI from the Exobox project (which was also implemented in Squeak Smalltalk).

Looks like the Squeak and Croquet community should hire a designer to take over the world ...

Magma OODB

There is an interview available with Chris Muller on the Magma object oriented database: download the MP3. Magma is a multi-user object database for Smalltalk.

If you want to know more about the project try the Magma page on the Squeak swiki or join the magma mailinglist.

Toothpick for Squeak

Toothpick - a simple configurable Logging mechanism for Smalltalk
is now also available as Monticello package on SqueakSource
and SqueakMap. I just converted the source zip into a monticello
package with kindly permission from Joseph Pelrine. His code is
released under BSD license.

More infos can be found on:

http://www.metaprog.com/Toothpick
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/5890
(includes an example script)

The Monticello repository on http://www.squeaksource.com/Toothpick
has read/write access for future contributions. Since Toothpick
is available for various Smalltalk dialects contributions should
not be limited to Squeak.

Mondrian for Squeak

Mondrian is getting ported from VisualWorks to Squeak. With Mondrian it is easy to create a certain view on a software system by a few smalltalk lines. I used it back in a VisualWorks project I once worked as a consultant and found it really helpfull. It shows relations in object oriented systems and helps you to find where to start with refactorings.

Just load the latest version of the port from http://mc.lukas-renggli.ch. The current state of the port looks promising:



This is what I got after evaluating:


MOPaintings classInheritanceOf: ParseNode.
MOPaintings systemComplexityOf: ParseNode


The graph shows the inheritance hierarchy for the class ParseNode. The width of the rectangles represents the number of instance variables, the height the number of methods. Take care of large rectangles on top of the graph - superclasses may define behavior not needed in every subclass. Specialization should be at the bottom of the inheritance tree ...

SqueakBOF Movies

Göran Krampe made some SqueakBOF movies from OOPSLA 2006 available

Toothpick - Logging mechanism for Smalltalk

Found a link to Toothpick - a simple configurable Logging mechanism for Smalltalk. Looks like Joseph found the time to make it available for various Smalltalk dialects (Dolphin, Squeak, VisualAgeST and VisualWorks). Great!

Unfortunately the Squeak version is still deployed as a simple zip file with changesets - thats now a little bit old fashioned.

With Monticello and SqueakSource Squeak now has a better way of making source code available and a Squeak map registration will provide a comfortable way to download the package from within Squeak...