Cincom is also working on the ObjectStudio GUI - Andreas Hiltner and Dirk Verleyson are covering that. The main goals are to update the implementation, and surface as much of it as possible into Smalltalk (it's mostly in C now).
The framework is separate from the old stuff - new class at the top mapping to a window, called UIView. Ultimately, this will be integrated with a new GUI designer as well, but that's further out.
Old GUI used GDI, new GUI is using GDI+ (C++ based). Adds some features not in OS - anti-aliasing, floating poit coords, gradient shading, and a lot more. It's got a flat API, so it's accessible from C. It's a business class rendering framework, not a high speed one like DirectX.
Switching from Trigger Events to Announcements. Impemented with tests as well. The rest of the talk went through a demo of what's been done - it looks pretty good so far. Interesting dogfooding aspect of this - Dirk is the first user of it, as he's building tools for ObjectStudio. New API for opening a window is familiar for ObjectStudio - should be easy to migrate to.
Gemtalk and Instantiations already did theirs; today it's Cincom's turn, and Arden Thomas is up there giving us the roadmap. Things that are happening that impact both VW and OS:
64 bit VMs revamped
Windows 64 bit
GC improvements
Atomic Loading
Delay alternatives
Store revamped - now uses Glorp under the covers - improved store "GC"
New merge engine, new comparsion tool
Latest Seaside integrated
Now supports external encryption (lots of interesting issues with the US government on that)
Xtreams is moving forward, improvements to Timestamp
New webserver (SiouX) in VisualWorks, using xtreams. Should be faster and simpler than old Opentalk based server. Rehosted Seaside and WS* to use this
New web app framework, AppeX
Modern web framework
HTML5, JS, Ajax, JSON, XHR
Auto session management
Lightweight, flexible
Polycephaly has been renamed to MatriX (again, using xtreams)
Future Store improvements
Less memory usage
Better method source handling
Better external file handling
Make it faster
Some stuff he won't tell us yet.
Now, ObjectStudio
Improvements to modeling and mapping tool coming. Windows 8 certification coming. Improving fonts, trying to get rid of a lot of the old "done in C" things from ObjectStudio, move them to the image. Unicode support for DB2. Updated and improved ODBC support. There is an ongoing project to improve the widget set in ObjectStudio. Upcoming release will have new GUI work into preview, and will use the VW COM code, which has seen more work recently.
Now the VW specific stuff. Improvements to the Project Launcher. COM updates, including COM 64 bit. Better ActiveX integration. Some JIT improvements on the Unix and Windows platforms, ability to have the MS specific DLLs statically linked to the VM. Skins (native looking widgets, using the images for the platforms for the widgets) is going into preview, updated keyboard handling is coming. Totally revamped command system for that. Much better integration with Macs due to that work. Improved text editor (check out our podcast with Michael Lucas-Smith - part 1 and part 2 on that).
Finally, some demos of the skins work, the editor work, and the AppeX work
We'll be recording a podcast tomorrow after the final talk here at STIC 13 - with our perspective on what we saw and heard. It'll be posted on Sunday, and over the course of the next few months, the audio and video for the talks will be appearing in my regular audio and video feeds. Stay tuned :)
First big news - Gemstone/S 32 is no longer EOL. It's not being enhanced much (all the work is on the 64 bit rev), but it's a live product still. The older 64 bit rev is 2.4.5.3 - it's stable, with all work going into the 3.x stream they've got out. The latest - 3.1.0.3 is the latest 3.x release, with 3.2 coming out in December 2013. New stuff:
OpenLDAP
OpenSSL
ZLib
LiblCU
Regular Expressions
Support for Solaris 11
More MT work in reclaiming sessions
More Unicode support
New work on the indexing system
Improved encryption support, including AES
new hot standby support
Thread safe GCI support coming
Adding some protections against DOS attacks to netldi and stone
Improvements to VSD
On the server side, no support changes. Client side, still support latest two versions of Cincom and Instantiations Smalltalks. Licensing - perpetual, subscription was discontinued by VMWare, now coming back. Also have VAR licenses. The free (web) edition is still out, and they intend to make it more fine grained.
MagLev - In "Strategic Planning" mode. No work has been done for 2 years at GS, but there has been work at HPI. To get real, would have to support Ruby 1.9, which is not there yet. The future on this is not clear.
So we just found out that 20 percent of the world's shipping moves on a Gemstone/S powered app, the one that started at OOCL - and Dan Ware tells us that it's going to grow to more of the shipping companies. That's why they have a good future laid out in front of them :)
Company name is now Gemtalk Systems - they can be found on the web at gemtalksystems.com
Sure, helmets are a good idea. However, if you mandate their use, don't be surprised if the actual usage of your system is low. Think about it - if you're a tourist in NYC, how likely are you to have a helmet on hand? If you don't, do you actually want to buy something you the have to cart around the rest of the day?
Well, at E3, EA says that the next Dragon Age game will be released in 2014 on the next gen consoles. However - even if DA2 didn't put you off your BioWare feed, this game is not a reason to get a next gen console:
Yes Dragon Age Inquisition is coming to Xbox 360, XBox One, PS3, PS4, AND PC.
I did a podcast with Mark Roos last year on this - running Smalltalk (Digitalk 2.0 in this case) on the JVM. Unlike a lot of the other efforts in that direction, it's actually in production
I feel for John O'Keefe - his machine blue screened when he tried to hook it up to the conference AV. I had a kerne panic at ESUG a few years back, so I know what's that's like.
John got things sorted faster than I did, so that's good :)
After a month of vague corporate comments from Microsoft executives, we now know the Xbox One's game licensing policy was written from the ground up for companies. It's aggressively anti-consumer and anti-middle class, and it outright ignores underprivileged gamers. It's gross, despicable, greedy, pathetic, cowardly and out of touch with a growing global resentment for corporations.
Yeah, a gaming PC hooked up to the TV to run Steam Big Picture is looking better and better....
I'll be at the STIC conference this week - so no podcast tomorrow, and the daily screencasts are on hiatus for the week. Lots of content will be ready for posting after that though, so stay tuned :)
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at how you can get into trouble with message construction and #doesNotUnderstand:. 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:
Today we'll take a look at a common pattern in Smalltalk development that can get you into real trouble - overriding #doesNotUnderstand: to construct messages and send them via #perform: - like this:
The problems with this are twofold - first, your API is effectively hidden - using standard senders/implentors searches, you don't find it. For follow on developers, it's as if your API doesn't exist. Second, you'll probably end up implementing something like this:
Which swallows your exceptions. This kind of code seems very cool the first time you write it, but do yourself a favor - avoid it. There are uses for DNU (mostly when creating proxy objects) - but you should think carefully before using this kind of pattern
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.
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at a small pacakge that adds an infinity object to Pharo's numerics. 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.
Back on the Microsoft side, someone enabled my account again - I'm finally able to download my XBox profile. Now I just need to install a bazillion things, since the original issue was the crash that corrupted the hard drive....
The good news is, Microsoft support is talking to me, and has escalated my case. The bad news: All communication is via their support forums, which seem to have a 24 hour turn around on messages. The other bad news - the first set of suggestions were all of the things I've already tried that don't work. So... I wait for later today or tomorrow, and see if they have any other ideas. In the meantime, my XBox is still effectively a brick.
Prima had to leave additional space at the inner edges of each page, because the length "tested the limits of what an actual binding can take," said Hodgson. The Legendary Edition's updates include all Dragonborn-related content and a new, more readable body font.
To use some old gaming terms, using the book as a weapon does 6d6 of damage :)
Today's Smalltalk 4 You looks at using the visualworks.ini process (to start any image with the right VM) in ObjectStudio. 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.