VisualWorks Box!

Some days ago, when I downloaded the NC version of VisualWorks, I found also this page, with the possibility of request a CD of VWNC to Cincom. Then, I completed the form and forgot the question.

Today, very very few days after such request, I received on my home, on Sunchales, Argentina a box containing a software box, coming from Cincinnati!.

And, as in old (good) times, when the software comes from the producers inside nice boxes with manuals. (Even my own modest products of past times (Biochemical Laboratories, ERP, etc) were boxed with printed manuals!.

In this case the box have the VisualWorks CD and the ObjectStudio CD (non commercial) versions. Also, one nice datasheet to each product.

If anyone from Cincom is reading this post I would know if the commercial versions comes with printed manuals, just by curiosity.


May be some day, if business permit, I could buy the commercial version.

By now I'm very impressed, as I told on my previous post, and I continue learning on my free time (Currently about toolbars, menus and other things of UI building).

My current goal is port my Aida/Scribo Console to VisualWorks under the MIT license.

Thanks Cincom by sending me the package of NC version!

VisualWorks first steps

As I've developed the Scribo-Console, and taking in account that Aida/Web is available on several different Smalltalk's I will try to make the same with the console. An excellent excuse to explore others Smalltalk’s!.

Then, the list of possible ports of Scribo-Console is the following: VisualWorks - Smalltalk/X - Gemstone - ObjectStudio - Dolphin.

I'm not sure if will make all, but at least will try with the Smalltalk’s that run on Linux. Not sure with the others, because I don’t like to work on Windows.

To start I selected VisualWorks, because I give it a try on the past, version 5 if not bad remember, and willing to try it again, being that is from Aida/Web comes.

I started installing VWNC on my Xubuntu desktop and, after a few adjustments, is running ok.

Such adjustments were two:

1. After burn the ISO image on the CD, I needed to copy all the CD contents on the hard disk to make work the installation. Don’t tried much things, simply copied and installed and it worked.

2. The startup script, named VisualNC need to be bash, not csh, then I replaced the first sentence (#!/bin/csh) with this one: #!/bin/bash.

And VWNC started smoothly.

First thing I noticed was the fonts a bit smaller to my current resolution, then I switched to the biggest (from Settings VW itself). And also I set the look and feel to Mac (Is the only way of have one of these here!).

Two things caught my attention: the amazing speed to load, open windows, saving, etc and the superb documentation of VW. I think that any product that play on the major leagues must have complete documentation, and VW have it.

After starting VWNC by first time I saved my own image to not broke the original, and then installed the parcel of Aida/Web. Also I searched something to have the code colored and found RBCodeHighlighting on Environment Enhancements category of Parcel Manager.

Having now a comfortable environment to work in, I started the port. As is a tiny app, on the Squeak version I did the UI on the same main class, with Morphic. Then the challenge here is learn a bit about the UI Painter (When I first tried VW, some years ago, I completed the Walk Through, and now I plan to base the work reading again this doc).

Porting some methods, an important thing I noticed, being that I comes from Squeak with no namespaces in mind, is the need of put the namespace name before the class name, as in the attached image: Swazoo.SwazooServer singleton sites (Thanks Janko by point it).

Well, is time to go back to real work, and wait having a bit of free time to continue playing with VW and the console port!

PasswordsPro is ready to download (and buy)!

After the presentation of ClavesPC on ESUG 2008 I received some suggestions to release the same product but on English language.

Being that the product isn't anymore of my property because I sold it to the company Solo10 we talked and agreed to make an English version with the name PasswordsPro.

As usual, I did the product development work and Solo10 the graphics, site and commercial and marketing tasks.

As I started the development (when I first developed the Spanish version) with the multilingual option in mind, wasn't a big effort having the two versions living on the same sources and compile each one with a few settings.

The same to the installer, developed with NSIS and HM NIS Edit.

And, after some days of work, PasswordsPro is here, ready to help protect your private data! Check the screenshots page.

And, if you are a smalltalker, be prepared to the offer we are working on. Soon more info, so stay tunned!

Aida/Scribo Console

In the way of make Aida/Scribo a bit more user friendly to a non smalltalker user, Janko asked on the Aida list by the development of a little operation console.

I taken the job and developed a Morphic console to operate the basic aspects detaileds on Janko's mail.

The current version of the console permits:

• Start the whole Swazoo Web Server
• Stop the whole Swazoo Web Server
• Start/Stop individual Aida/Scribo sites

To have the console working on your image, you can download it from its repository and make the following changes on SwazooServer class:

• Add the instance method #isServing (under the category testing) with the following content:

^self servers notEmpty

• Add the instance method #watchdogOther empty (on the category private-watchdog)

The console has two different interfaces (another way to show the power of Smalltalk) as you can see on the following pics:

To show it, evaluates: ScriboConsole basicView.





To show it, evaluates:
ScriboConsole fullView.


Enjoy it!