PngSuiteExplorer

PngSuiteExplorer is a simple tool to test the support for PNG files in Pharo using the "official" test-suite for PNG.

Alternative Pharo-contributor tool explained with videos

https://github.com/astares/pharo-contributor now provides two videos demonstrating how this tool can be used as an alternative to easily contribute to latest Pharo 7

Video 1:

 

and Video 2:

 

Pillar Techtalk

Intelligent System Construction

Video from latest tech talk of PharoClub: Intelligent System Construction by Alexandre Bergel


 

PrismCodeDisplayer for Seaside

A wrapper for PrismJS for Seaside web framework. Read more here or check the demo here.

TelescopeCytoscape for Seaside

Telescope is an engine for efficiently creating meaningful visualizations using Seaside and Pharo. Now there is a connector for CytoscapeJs for Seaside. Read more here and a demo is here.

Reproducible moldable interactions using Pharo and Bloc

A new inspector model in Pharo that records developer interactions as first-class entities and uses them to reduce repetition: this is part of "Reproducible moldable interactions" master thesis. You can directly jump to the PDF here. Note that the solution presented is implemented in Pharo using Bloc UI infrastructure.

Pharo - "Containers" for collections and data structures

"Containers" - a project for alternate collections and data-structures for Pharo Smalltalk is now on GitHub. Read more

ChartJs for Seaside

a binding of ChartJs for Seaside (the web framework running on Pharo). Read more
or try the demo here. Note that the demo link is different from what was originally announced.

Willow-Mixpanel

Willow-Mixpanel is now part of the ba-st Web Stack family. Read more.

Grafoscopio Sucess Story

Grafoscopio is a moldable and versatile tool for that allows to mix prose, data, code, visualizations into interactive reproducible documents, raging from single notebooks to complete books. There is new success story availabe for it available on the Pharo homepage.

Iceberg 0.7.5

the git tooling for Pharo is vailable and integrated into latest image of Pharo 7

Using P3 to connect Pharo to CockroachDB

One can now also use the P3 driver (PostgreSQL driver protocol 3.0) from Sven to connect Pharo also to CockroachDB. CockroachDB is an open-sourced software project (relational database management system) that is designed to store copies of data in multiple locations in order to deliver requested data when needed. It is described as a scalable, consistently-replicated, transactional datastore. The database is scalable in that a single instance can be run from a laptop while building an app, then scaled to thousands of commodity servers as a business grows.

Read more.

Pharo and XML

Monty has a nice blog about Pharo and XML

Dockerizing Pharo

Some slides on how to dockerize Pharo.

Iceberg 0.7 explained

Iceberg - the Code Versioning Tool for Pharo with a binding to git now has a reworked model and UI. Esteban gave an intro to it in a techtalk:


 

GraphQL

REST services are easy to implement in Pharo - especially with "Teapot" and my simple "Tealight" extensions for it. Read the Tealight project page with some documentation and examples to get an idea about it.

If you worked with or heard about REST then you might also come across GraphQL. It's a technology initially developed at Facebook.

In GraphQL, the shape of the response is built up on the server side to match the shape of a given JSON query.

So while in REST when you ask for a "book" item you receive a predefined JSON response with all attributes of the book. In GraphQL you might ask only for the books title or in another case for the books title and author at the same URL and receive an appropriate response.

Now there is also an initial library for GraphQL available for Pharo and VisualWorks.

Really nice!

Programming Neural Networks in Pharo - Preview

Agile Artificial Intelligence with Pharo - a new book is in the pipe. You can already have a preview.

Boadebui

Boadebui, a simple MIDI sequencer for Squeak Smalltalk.

Pharo to Anki

Using Pharo to create Anki decks that help to deliberately practice Japanese grammar by visualizing.

Instance inspection in Pharo

The Pharo Inspector on classes now has “instances” view. I added this a a few days ago and forgot to send a message to the list so anyone knows. Looks like I should blog more about my contributions again.

Pharo AWS SDK with SNS support

The Pharo AWS SDK now supports Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)

Pharo-sentry v0.2.2 releases

The unofficial Pharo SDK for Sentry error tracking platform from Peter is available with a new 0.2.2. release. Now with support for breadcrumbs and basic context.

Code is here:  https://github.com/peteruhnak/pharo-sentry

Feenk work on a Diagrammer for Pharo in Bloc

The Feenk team is working on on Diagrammer in Pharo. The idea is that developers should not have to leave the IDE - not even for drawing diagrams and they give a nice graphic preview on a more elaborate control of lines and figures in this tool with some screenshots on their twitter account.

 - Preview 1
 - Preview 2
 - Preview 3

This nicely shows what is already possible in Bloc.

Updated DiscordsSt for Pharo

A new version of DiscordsSt, An API wrapper for Discord written in Pharo

 https://github.com/JurajKubelka/DiscordSt

Playing with face detection in Pharo

A nice medium article from Andrei Chis on "Playing with face detection in Pharo"

Clean and modular stateful traits for Pharo

Pharo 7 now integrated (beside many others) a special pull request (PR) to integrate a new version of Traits, this version includes the following features:

- Stateful Traits
- Modular implementation, it is loaded after bootstrap
- Cleaner interface
- Reducing duplicate methods as Traits extends from Class

Since Pharo also has Traits, Slots, MetaLinks, ClassAnnotations and other meta facilities it is a very nice lively system to also work on the metalevel and do metaprogramming.

Shortcuts in Settings tool

With the latest version of Commander and the new Calypso Code Browser, all shortcuts are
explorable and configurable.

SQLite Loadable Extensions for Pharo

Pierce implemented SQLite Loadable Extensions and you can find it in the UDBC repository.

Pharo Bitcoin's BIP39 mnemonic

Esteban Maringolo provides a simple implementation of Bitcoin's BIP39 mnemonic for Pharo

OSSubprocess - 64 bits support preview

The "OSSubprocess" project for Pharo now provides a preview on 64bits support

Terminal Emlation in Pharo

Pavel is resurrecting Terminal Emulation for Pharo. Read more.

 

Amber Smalltalk 0.21.0

New release 0.21.0 of Amber Smalltalk is announced here.

Actors for Squeak Smalltalk

A library to add an Erlang-style Actor model to Squeak.

Code Critics Bar Charts for Pharo Smalltalk

can be found in the following Git project: https://github.com/hernanmd/ccbc

Would be interesting to compare Pharo 6.1 with Pharo 7alpha

ELIZA-Pharo

Pharo Smalltalk implementation of ELIZA, an early natural language processing computer program.

Restore Open Croquet

Nikolay Suslov restored the original Open Croquet onto Squeak 6.x. Video is here.

Teamtalk - Pharo Cluster execution

Teamtalk - Simple library to execute Pharo Smalltalk code in a cluster of Pharo Smalltalk instances. MapReduce is also supported. It is based on Vert.x using the VerStix library.

Virtual Reality Live at Thales with Pharo

Thales is using Pharo together with the Woden 3D engine:


 

Tabular Debugging view in Bloc

Peter Uhnak describes how he has built Tabular Debugging view in Bloc for Pharo

SmartSuggestions improvements

Some improvements and a new example on how to extend SmartSuggestions for Pharo.

pharo-vnc-supervisor - Docker Image for Pharo web development

Masashi Umezawa created a docker image for Pharo web development:

https://github.com/mumez/pharo-vnc-supervisor

New version of the Ba-St Web Stack

is available.

Shape Grammar Editor in Pharo

Code is on GitHub, written using Pharo and Bloc: https://github.com/Laeri/shapegrammar_pharo

Code Completion in Pharo: the basics

Myroslava gives some insights into the Code completion implementation in Pharo.

Three-valued logic

in Pharo. Project is here.

Squeak TiledMaps

It’s a package for Squeak Smalltalk. It can load and cache static, prerendered map tiles from a variety of sources including OpenStreetMaps, Bing Maps, and so on. Nice!

String Comparison Performance

Massive String Comparison Performance Boost Up-coming in the Cog VM. Read more.

Moldable analysis with Moose

Pharo TechTalk: Contributing

RSS Tools for Pharo

Tools to work with RSS feeds: https://brackendev.github.io/RSSTools-Pharo

The Moldable Editor

Read more here.

Pharo VM synch with OSVM

Latest Pharo VM versions are based now on latest builds from OSVM. Read more.

Simple SMPP for Pharo

Simple SMPPv3.4 codec and connection library for Smalltalk/Pharo

Pharo Docu for MLNeuralNetwork

is here.

Pharo MineSweeper

MineSweeper implemented using Bloc in Pharo:

Pharo Pathfinder

Here is a video of Pathfinder - implemented using Bloc in Pharo.

Neural Network - Handwritten Digit Recognition

Pierce has written a very nice blog post on recognizing handwritten digits using neural networks in Pharo

MooseQuery

Moose-Query is a domain-specific language to build navigations and scopes queries for entities in Moose.

 More documentation is available here as well as the project itself.

Pharo as ticket machine

Pharo powered ticket machine for the Tournai Jazz festival. UI made with Spec framework. See it here.

Cons for Pharo

In the Pharo catalog you will now also find a "Cons" project. The project provides a Lisp-style lazy cons list. Can handle Smalltalk streams and infinite generators (blocks) as though they were lists. It was written by Evan Donahue and the code is on GitHub.

Pharo 7 time planning

Usually we have a Pharo release each year in May - but the Pharo 7 release is now defered to the end of the year for good reasons.

The switch to git took a lot of time and is still ongoing with a rework in progress for Iceberg tool to simplify the UI. Also the 64 virtual machine for Windows and other important tasks keep Esteban busy. Additionally new additions to the Pharo ecosystem like the new Calypso system browser need to be integrated.

Which gives more time for contributions and cleanups. Meanwhile there are nice changes merge already (like the Shift class builder, latest Iceberg, many cleanups, ...) there are also nice additions in the pipe like the possibility to extend the Playground similar to Inspector or the possibility to use the foreign function interface without the source file in a deployment scenario.


Here is a description for the new contribution process. As an alternative you can also use my contribution project with scripts and a help topic to get you started easily. You can also use the new Pharo Launcher 1.1. or Fari - a shell to fetch and prepare new images. There will also be a Google summer of code (GSOC) in 2018 for the 14th year.

There are also additional sprint dates already announced till June 2018.

Jump in - the water is fine!

Porting from StHub to GitHub

How it could be done - read an experience report from Hernán.

Iceberg history in Calypso

How to see the full history of a method with Iceberg (the Pharo git tool) and Calypso (the upcoming new system browser). Esteban shows in a video that it could be done if your project is connected with iceberg:


 

Calypso Spotter tool

Esteban worked on a scoped Spotter for the new Calypso system browser for Pharo, to avoid the use of mouse/track pad when coding.

Updated PHANtom

PHANtom - a modern aspect language for Pharo Smalltalk By Johan Fabry and Daniel Galdames was updated for Pharo 6.1. by Inés Sosa

The repo can be found at: https://github.com/InesSosa95/PHANtom

InriaSoft - Pooling software development for sustainability

There is a Launch of InriaSoft, a software community. Read more - it is a nice article with Pharo mentioned.

Woden2 for Pharo 7

The "World Dynamic Engine 2" running on Pharo 7. Read more.

Pharo Sprint dates 2018

Next sprint dates for Pharo were announced. 

Moose2Model 1.1.0

New release 1.1.0 is available

Pharo and Bittrex API

A Pharo/Smalltalk interface to the Bittrex API. The project is on Github and the announcement is here.

Google Summer of Code 2018 with Pharo Consortium

Pharo community will apply also this year - so read more.

OpenSmalltalk VM Meeting

Fabio Niephaus wants to organize a meeting on OpenSmalltalk VM. The agenda is yet to be finalized, but maybe Clément and/or Eliot may give an update on their work on Sista. Read more here if you are interested or check the doodle.

StableMarriage for Pharo

A solver for the stable marriage problem written in Pharo. If you want to know what it is then have a look at this video.

Python3Generator for Pharo

A toolkit to generate Python 3 source code from Pharo: Python3 Generator for Pharo is available on GitHub.

Pharo Smalltalk Ressource usage

A blog post on Pharo Smalltalk Ressource usage.

OpenSSL for Pharo on Windows

OpenSSL-Pharo now works on Windows. Tested on Windows 10 with a fresh 32-bit Pharo 6.1 zip package downloaded from pharo.org. On Windows this library uses libeay.dll which is bundled with the Pharo VM. Read more here.

Well done Pierce!

Future platform for AR and VR

Interesting TED talk from David A. Smith:


 

Pharo Mastodon

A Pharo API for Mastodon.

Code is here: https://github.com/estebanlm/pharo-mastodon

Pharango

Pharango - a http connector for Pharo and arango db.

Code is here: https://github.com/Valtena/Pharango

HaltManager for Pharo

Want to better manage your debugging breakpoints in Pharo?

Then use HaltManager. Source code and docu is on GitHub: https://github.com/dupriezt/HaltManager

Pharo at Dev Conf

Christophe Demarey will present agile programming in Pharo at

http://bordeaux.ncrafts.io/

StarfallNight

A little game implemented using Bloc in Pharo 6.1. 3 jewels drop from the top.


You can move it left and right by left arrow key and right arrow key respectively. You can rotate the order of the jewels by the up arrow key. The down arrow key will drop the jewels on-to the floor. If the pile of the jewels stack on the floor have 3 or more of the same kind of jewels in a row, column or diagonal, they will vanish out and the jewels on the vanished one will fall down to the floor (or another jewel), which may cause another vanish of jewels.

This game was implemented to learn how to use Bloc. The source code is available at github https://github.com/tomooda/StarfallNight/

Pharo Newsletter

The Pharo newsletter archive is now available on:

http://newsletter.pharo.org

If you like you can help with content or own articles for the newsletter.

TypeLWidgets for Pharo

A demo of 2 retro analog meters. The left meter monitors system status. The blue hand shows CPU load, the red for memory space and the short black for GC. The right meter shows activities of the mouse.The blue hand shows x position of the mouse cursor, the red for y position and the short black at the bottom for mouse buttons.

TypeLWidgets for Pharo is an open source library distributed at https://github.com/tomooda/TypeLWidgets under the MIT license.


 

VoxelSpace

VoxelSpace - a simple Voxel raster graphics rendering engine written in Pharo:

https://github.com/pavel-krivanek/VoxelSpace

New Video on Quuve - a web application written in Pharo

A new video from http://www.debrispublishing.com about the highlights of Quuve - an application written in Pharo.

PharoTech Talk Nov. 21 - DiscordSt - accessing Discord from Pharo

The video from this weeks TechTalk on Pharo (in higher quality). The talk was about Discord access from Pharo. Code is on GitHub:

  https://github.com/JurajKubelka/DiscordSt

Grease for Squeak 6 and Pharo 7

The Grease portability library now loadable on Squeak-trunk (Squeak 6) and Pharo-alpha (Pharo 7)

Pharo deployments based on minimal image

A step to step tutorial for prepare the minimal image for deploy is here. More details are here.

YandexTranslator for Pharo

An implementation for the Yandex rest translation service for Smalltalk. Code is here: https://github.com/matias-pierobon/YandexTranslator

Lazaro - Screen reading for Pharo

A set of adapters for most of the famous and popular screen readers. This package allows you to use a screen reader with Pharo. Code is here: https://github.com/matiasmelendi/Lazaro

Winter - Develop games in Pharo

Project "Winter" from Alvaro Piorno is the new and updated version of "Storm" from Esteban Lorenzano. It is a 2D game development framework using FFI with Chipmunk2D Physics Engine. Code is on GitHub: https://github.com/apiorno/Winter

OpenSSL wrapper for Pharo

Pierce started with an initial OpenSSL wrapper for Pharo

Trapping Unix Signals in Pharo

A new library that allows you to trap Unix signals in Pharo. Basically it uses UFFI to register a callback on the C library function signal()

SeasideTesting recovered

Seasside testing brought to attention again.

Allen Wirfs-Brock - A Modular Journey To A World Spanning Virtual Image

Interesting video on the history of Smalltalk at Tectronix from Allen Wirfs-Brock



 and the slides are available here.

Libusb binding and HID for Pharo

There is a Libusb  binding (using UFFI) and support for the Human Interface Device - HID (that uses the binding but is written in pure Smalltalk) for Pharo. Code is on GitHub.

Read the announcement

Software exploration tool Moose2Model for developers (ABAP, SAP, Java, Smalltalk, …) – Roadmap

There is a Software exploration tool Moose2Model for developers (ABAP, SAP, Java, Smalltalk, …) written in Pharo. You can now read the Roadmap. You can see some of this in the ESUG 2017 presentation of Rainer Winkler

Pharo success story: Driving ATMs in Moscow streets (Videos)

As I already reported here Pharo 1.1 was used to build ATM-kind software in Russian Bank. Such devices could be found in Moscow streets. Now there are two videos available on that, one showing the system in action



 and one showing it in Pharo development environment: