obrien@randvax.UUCP (Michael O'Brien) (02/05/86)
There seem to be at least a few users of BS II out there. I'd like to suggest that we use this newsgroup to exchange bugfixes, goodies, etc. BS II seems to be about the only version that runs on current hardware aside from the Tektronix boxes, unless Dandy Smalltalk has been released. I can lead off with a horror story: Sun 3.0 PILOT has broken BS II in at least two ways: 1) Unencoded keyboard input doesn't work in 3.0. This is generally acknowledged to be a mistake but it probably won't be fixed in the first full release of 3.0. There are a couple of workarounds; anyone care to share them? 2) I tried picking a form from the display and the VM died in "pwo_rop". Anyone else seen this? How many BS II users are out there, anyway?
mark@apple.UUCP (Mark Lentczner) (02/11/86)
[] In response to: BS II seems to be about the only version that runs on current hardware aside from the Tektronix boxes, unless Dandy Smalltalk has been released. Just thought I'd mention that the Smalltalk from Apple, runs on current hardware, the Macintosh, Macintosh-XL, and Macintosh-Plus. It's a Xerox image and runs slightly faster than BSII. -mark -- --Mark Lentczner Apple Computer UUCP: {nsc, dual, voder, ios}!apple!mark CSNET: mark@Apple.CSNET
rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) (02/12/86)
First, I would like to applaud Mike's initiative for BSII and
Smalltalk information exchange. Let's build a real user community
out here.
Second, here is a horror story of my own. This is not limited to
sun2's, or even suns; this is a problem of the BSII interpreter in
general. The problem?
The message "at:put:" to subclasses of Array (that only have
indexable instance variables) gets intercepted by the
interpreter! For example, the method
at: i put: v
| |
self halt.
^ super at: i put: v
in a subclass of Array will *not* be executed if the message
is sent directly. (Single stepping the debugger through the
code will get to the method.) The interpreter clearly states
that it checks for this message "for speed".
I don't have a fix for the problem (probably taking out the special
check would work nicely). I haven't minded because once the problem
is known the work arounds are easy. Finding it, though, is another
thing altogether. (Remember the announcement said to expect bugs!)
Lastly, I think that information exchange should not be limited to
the interpreter itself. Let's exchange some Smalltalk goodies and
hints about using Smalltalk as a programming language/environment.
Next: a Smalltalk goodie to do filename expansion