Smalltalk with James Robertson

It hit 70 today here in Columbia; Minneapolis, where I was last week, is still not getting spring:

Tags: snow

Today's Smalltalk 4 You is a longer video - Nick Ager reprising an ESUG presentation on developing mobile apps using Seaside, Pharo, and JQuery. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Tags: smalltalk, pharo, seaside, jquery, mobile

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at adding a weather layer to roadmap. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. Join the Facebook Group to discuss the tutorials. You can view the archives here.

To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Tags: javascript, maps

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at the herald image that pops up when you start ObjectSTudio (or VisualWorks). More specifically, how to turn that off without changing your command line. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Tags: smalltalk, herald, objectstudio

I've had a cold for the last few days, so I was not able to record a podcast with Dave - we'll be back next weekend with new content for you though!

Tags: podcast

Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at reading inage files (such as JPG) into VA Smalltalk. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

.

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

---

It's pretty easy to read in image (graphic) files in VA Smalltalk (so long as they are in a supported format). Have a look at class CgImageFileFormat and its subclasses - each concrete subclass reads in a particular kind of file. For instance - to read a JPG, you can do one of two things:

file := CfsFileDescriptor open: 'thuum.jpg' oflag: ORDONLY.
image := format loadFromFileHandle: file atOffset: 0.
file close.
^image

| format image |
format := CgJPEGFileFormat new.
image := format loadFromFile: 'thuum.jpg'.
^image

Notice how we don't need to deal with opening/closing the file in the second example? That's because the framework handles those details. You don't need to worry about catching exceptions for unhanded formats or non-existent files, either - say you try this:

| format image |
format := CgJPEGFileFormat new.
image := format loadFromFile: 'someimage.jpg'.
^image

| format image |
format := CgJPEGFileFormat new.
image := format loadFromFile: 'someimage.png'.
^image

In the first case, the file does not exist - in the second, the format (PNG) is not supported. Either way, the VA code hands you back nil. So, whenever you read an image file, you'll want to check against nil. Finally, what do you get back?

You get an instance of CgDeviceIndependentImage.

Need more help? There's a screencast for other topics like this which you may want to watch. Questions? Try the "Chat with James" Google gadget over in the sidebar.

Tags: smalltalk, va smalltalk, image

21st International Smalltalk Joint Conference - Call for Contributions

Annecy, France
from 9 to 13 September 2013
http://www.esug.org/conferences/2013/

This call includes:
Developer Forum
Smalltalk Technology Award

Student Volunteer
Camp Smalltalk 8 September 2013

---

For the past 21 years, the European Smalltalk User Group (ESUG) has organised the International Smalltalk Conference, a lively forum on cutting edge software technologies that attract people from both academia and industry for a whole week. The attendees are both engineers using Smalltalk in business and students and teachers using Smalltalk both for research and didactic purposes.

As every year, this year's edition of the largest European Smalltalk event will include the regular Smalltalk developers conference with renowned invited speakers, a Smalltalk camp that proves fruitful for interactions and discussions. This year will be held the 9th edition of the Innovation Technology Awards where prizes will be awarded to authors of best pieces of Smalltalk-related projects and an international workshop on Smalltalk and dynamic languages

You can support the ESUG conference in many different ways:

• Sponsor the conference. New sponsoring packages are described at http://www.esug.org/supportesug/becomeasponsor/
• Submit a talk, a software or a paper to one of the events. See below.
• Attend the conference. We'd like to beat the previous record of attendance (170 people at Amsterdam 2008)!
• Students can get free registration and hosting if they enrol into the the Student Volunteers program. See below.

Developers Forum: International Smalltalk Developers Conference

---

We are looking for YOUR experience on using Smalltalk. You will have 30 min for presentations and 45 min for hand-ons tutorial.

The list of topics for the normal talks and tutorials includes, but is not limited to the following:

• XP practices, Development tools, Experience reports
• Model driven development, Web development, Team management
• Meta-Modeling, Security, New libraries & frameworks
• Educational material, Embedded systems and robotics
• SOA and Web services, Interaction with other programming languages

Teaching Pearls

---

New this year!!!

We want two news types of sessions in addition to default talk and show us your projects sessions.

• Show your business 10 min session (Get prepared!!)
• Teaching pearls : we want some session on how to teach some design aspects. We want your tip and tricks to teach Smalltalk or OOP. We expect to have several 10 to 15 min sessions aggregated.

Open Forum: starting with Smalltalk

---

New this year!!

The event will be held at IAE Savoie Mont-Blanc - University of Savoie. This is an opportunity for students and local professionals to discover Smalltalk. A room will be freely accessible and we would like to propose some talks and workshop for Smalltalk beginners.

The list of topics includes, but is not limited to the following:

• Why Smalltalk ?
• Panorama of Smalltalk solutions
• Getting started with Smalltalk
• Success stories

How to submit?

---

Submissions due on 15st June 2013
Notification of acceptance will be on done on the fly.
More information at http://www.esug.org/conferences/2013

Pay attention: the places are limited so do not wait till the last minute to apply. Prospective presenters should submit a request to Stephane.Ducasse AND USE THE following header [ESUG 2013 Developers].

Please follow the template below the email will be automatically processed!

 Subject: [ESUG 2013 Developers] + your name
 First Name:
 Last Name:
 Email where you can always be reached:
 Title:
 Type: Tutorial/Talk/Teaching Pearl/OpenForum
 Abstract:
 Bio:
 	Any presentation not respecting this form will be discarded automatically

International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies

---

Smalltalk is considered as a design pearl and as a beacon in the realm of programming languages and programming environments. We are proud to invite submissions to the International Workshop on Smalltalk Technologies which is held as part of the ESUG 2013 joint event. The goals of the workshop is to create a forum around advances or experience in Smalltalk. We welcome contributions on all aspects, theoretical as well as practical, of Smalltalk related topics such as

• aspect-oriented programming, meta-programming
• frameworks, interaction with other languages
• implementation
• new dialects or languages implemented in Smalltalk, tools
• meta-modeling, design patterns, experience reports

Technology Award Competition

---

The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive, respectively, 500 Euros, 300 Euros and 200 Euros during an awards ceremony at the conference. Developers of any Smalltalk-based software are welcome to compete. More information at http://www.esug.org/conferences/2013/

Student Volunteer Program

---

If you are a student wanting to attend ESUG, have you considered being a student volunteer? Student volunteers help keep the conference running smoothly; in return, they have free accommodations, while still having most of the time to enjoy the conference.

More information at

• http://www.esug.org/conferences/2013
• http://www.esug.org/Conferences/2013/Student+Volunteers

We hope to see you there and have fun together.

Tags: esug13

Today's Javascript 4 You looks at "radar" maps using Javascript. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. Join the Facebook Group to discuss the tutorials. You can view the archives here.

To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Tags: javascript, maps

Today's Smalltalk 4 You continues looking at CSV file formats from Pharo Smalltalk. If you have trouble viewing it here in the browser, you can also navigate directly to YouTube. To watch now, click on the image below:

If you have trouble viewing that directly, you can click here to download the video directly. If you need the video in a Windows Media format, then download that here.

You can also watch it on YouTube:

Tags: smalltalk, pharo, csv