PDF creation in Smalltalk

Back in 2008 I created and published a Smalltalk binding for the
free Haru PDF library. With the package it is fairly easy to generate PDF documents from Squeak and Pharo.

The code is available at http://squeaksource.com/HPDF.html

It is also mentioned on the seaside website as one
alternative for Smalltalk PDF generation (beside others).

It looks like Georg's company now had the same idea to wrap
this library, they created a new product called PDFPrinter.
Looks like they have a deeper integration into the VisualWorks
printing system for their customers.

However - generating a PDF programatically is still a lot of work. What is still missing in Smalltalk is a counterpart to Java's JasperReport or BIRT with a more WYSIWYG editor like systems and PDF creation by mixing templates with data...

Smalltalk 2009 website

The Smalltalk 2009 conference website is up. Looks like it is driven by the Pier CMS (which is also written in Smalltalk using Seaside).

October Pharo Sprint

Damien Pollet has some photos of the Pharo Sprint in Lille, France (scroll down to the last two rows).

Let the objects flow

Adrian's PhD thesis on Object flow analysis was awarded with the Ernst Denert-Stiftung Prize. The paper is available online.
Congratulations!

Object Flow analysis is an approach to track how objects are passed through an OO system at runtime. It is discussed with the Smalltalk bytecode compiler as a case study.

Free Book - Pharo by Example

The new "Pharo by Example" book is now online:

http://pharobyexample.org

Metacello - new API

Dale has some news on the new Metacello API.

SqueakDBX 1.1

SqueakDBX 1.1 (an open source solution to access relational database) is out.

Mainly it consists of a plugin which will allow users to perform relational database operations through an open source library and a GLORP integration. It currently works on Squeak and Pharo and is now also ported to Dolphin.

Currently it hs support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQLite3 and MSSQL Server on Linux, Mac and Windows.

The official site is http://www.squeakdbx.org but due to a DNS problem it is currently only available at: http://squeakdbx.smallworks.com.ar

Metacello config for Seaside 3.0

Dale Henrichs is working hard on bringing Metacello to the masses.
There is now a Metacello config for Seaside 3.0 available.

Aconcagua & Chalten for Pharo

Aconcagua (a model for units, see docu) and Chalten (a model of the Gregorian Calendar, see docu) are now Pharo compatible.

Read more here.

Seaside 3.0alpha5

Julian announced Seaside 3.0 alpha5. According to the release notes now also issue 450 is fixed. ;)

JQuery WidgetBox for Seaside 3.0

Damien released a wrapper for a jQuery inplace editor and I followed with releasing the jquery widget box with wrappers for interesting jquery widgets like

• AlphanNumeric
  
• CheckTree
  
• DropShadow
  
• Splitter
  
• FishEye
  
• ...
  

You need Seaside 3.0 for that.

Free Book - Computer Programming using GNU Smalltalk

There is a new free book available from Canol Gökel called

"Computer Programming using GNU Smalltalk"

I really like the cover design.

Deploy Seaside applications to the world using Linux

A guide on how to deploy Seaside applications using Linux.

- Part 1 - Intro
- Part 2 - Install the VM
- Part 3 - Prepare the images
- Part 4 - Populate directories
- Part 5 - Configuring the webserver
- Part 6 - SeasideProxyTester

Thanks Miguel for sharing!