wilson@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu (01/28/89)
I asked similar questions a while back but got no responses. If anybody out there has any experience with V/Mac, please post any impressions you have of it. Here's what little I know: Smalltalk V/Mac uses the Macintosh user interface, with pulldown menus and a menubar across the top of the screen. This is different from the Smalltalk-80 userface, which uses popup menus, etc. I think some standard classes behave a little differently, but the basic language is almost Smalltalk-80. (Has anybody ported programs between these things?) Digitalk claims that Smalltalk/V Mac will run Smalltalk/V programs developed on their PC (AT, etc.) version. I don't know about the accuracy or precision of this claim. (How are the differences in window systems handled? Is MS Windows similar enough to the Mac interface that this works? How weird does the output look when you switch platforms? How well have they hidden the differences?) My impression is that V/Mac is fairly fast. Anybody got benchmarks? It's also smaller than Smalltalk-80 from ParcPlace, which is important to some of us. (We're considering Smalltalk for a lab of 4 Meg Mac II's, and we want that to give us plenty of space left over for programs with lots of live data.) I've received a couple of notes from other people with similar questions, so if anybody has the information, please post. -- Paul Paul R. Wilson Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory lab ph.: (312) 413-0042 U. of Ill. at Chi. EECS Dept. (M/C 154) wilson@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu Box 4348 Chicago,IL 60680 (or wilson@carcoar.stanford.edu)
bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort) (01/30/89)
In article <67500006@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu> wilson@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu
(Paul R. Wilson) asks about porting code between Digitalk Smalltalk
and ParcPlace Smalltalk.
I have ported coded from Smalltalk V/286 to PPS ST-80.
Two nuisance factors are the difference in the assignment
operator ("colon-equal" versus "left arrow"), and the
File-In message ("methods" versus "methodsFor:"). Unless
you are using the enhanced browser from Carleton, you
won't have category and protocol names for your classes
and methods.
Beyond that, there are some differences in Text objects and
the CharacterScanner, Forms (no color forms on the Mac),
and the MVC structure. The lack of color support on the
Mac is the biggest drawback to date. Until that problem
is fixed, I plan to stick with Digitalk on a 386 platform.
It usually takes me less than a day to port code.
--Barry Kort
goodrum@unccvax.UUCP (Cloyd Goodrum) (02/03/89)
In article <PETE.89Jan25211438@titan.titan.rice.edu>, pete@titan.titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) writes: > > has anyone had any experience with Digitalk's $195 version > [ of Smalltalk-80 for the Mac ]? And does anyone know the hardware requirements? I own an old 512K Mac with two disk drives. Would it even be possible to find a Smalltalk system that would run on my machine? I am a Smalltalk novice and am aware that I might be asking a very stupid question. > > Mucho Appreciato > Ditto. Cloyd Smith Goodrum III
phil@scs.Carleton.CA (Phil Trubey) (02/03/89)
In article <67500006@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu> wilson@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu writes: > Digitalk claims that Smalltalk/V Mac will run Smalltalk/V programs >developed on their PC (AT, etc.) version. I don't know about the accuracy >or precision of this claim. (How are the differences in window systems >handled? Is MS Windows similar enough to the Mac interface that this >works? How weird does the output look when you switch platforms? How >well have they hidden the differences?) The claim is quite accurate. Because the interfaces to the system classes didn't change much, a V program should filein and run on V/Mac with no mods. A few things get faked for you - like pop up menus get converted to pull down menubar menus (with menu titles like 'menu1') allowing you to add in the missing info to make it look more like a mac application. Your application's windows will automatically get mac scrollbars instead of the PC's 2nd button drag. By the way, V on the PC does *not* use MS Windows. Phil Trubey
jas@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Jeffrey A. Sullivan) (02/04/89)
Here are the official system requirements from the Digitalk Smalltalk/V manual: At least 1, preferably 1.5 megabytes of RAM Hard Disk and one floppy drive System 4.2 and finder 5.0 or later optional: Multifinder Additional RAM 68881 Large or color monitor -- .......................................................................... Jeffrey Sullivan | University of Pittsburgh jas@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu | Intelligent Systems Studies Program jasper@PittVMS.BITNET, jasst3@cisunx.UUCP | Graduate Student
phil@scs.Carleton.CA (Phil Trubey) (02/09/89)
Hardware requirements for Digitalk Smalltalk/V are 1M memory and either two floppies or a hard disk ... hard disk recommended. 1M memory is pretty tight, by the way, for serious applications. Other Smalltalks are worse for memory requirements - I believe ParcPlace requires 2M to run. I don't know of a Smalltalk that would run in 512K.
dbetz@mipsmag.UUCP (David Betz) (02/18/89)
In article <416@scs.Carleton.CA>, phil@scs.Carleton.CA (Phil Trubey) writes: > Hardware requirements for Digitalk Smalltalk/V are 1M memory ... Actually, the copy of ST/V Mac that I have says that it requires 1.5MB of memory.
mikel@apple.com (mikel) (02/22/89)
>> Just recently read the glowing review of ParkPlace's (sp?) $900 implementation >> of Smalltalk-80 for the Mac in Byte, has anyone had any experience with >> Digitalk's $195 version? What does the one have but the other doesn't? In article <67500006@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu> wilson@uicbert.eecs.uic.edu writes: > I asked similar questions a while back but got no responses. If anybody > out there has any experience with V/Mac, please post any impressions > you have of it. In scanning through the several messages posted after these posts, I didn't find any that actually answered the original question, so here's my two cents. I have used ParcPlace's SmallTalk a number of times, and I will concur that it is very slick. It has a lot of very convenient development tools and an extremely rich class hierarchy that makes it really easy to quickly construct more such tools. As an example, PP SmallTalk-80 can be used as the world's most expensive dumb terminal emulator for the Mac because the necessary classes for modem access are already built in. On the down side, PPS does not support the Mac interface at all, and they don't seem inclined to do so in the future as far as I can tell. This is not a problem if you are approaching the product as a SmallTalk aficianado, but definitely an annoyance if you are approaching it as a Mac developer. The screen update is also just slow enough on a Mac II to set the C and Modula2 hackers I know clucking a little under their breaths. By comparison, SmallTalk/V does support the Mac interface pretty well, although not perfectly. The text editor, for instance, invariably drives experienced Mac users crazy. It just doesn't work the way every other text editor for the Mac works. One plus relative to PPS-80 is that the screen display seems to be fast enough to satisfy the hardest-core C hackers I know ("that's SmallTalk? Wow."). Both products are really good. When you pay the extra money for PPS, what I think you are getting is, first of all, the original, one-and-only, name-brand SmallTalk; and second you get a richer class hierarchy and more nifty and useful little tools. You also get pretty transparent portability to machines like Suns and, I presume, the new 80386 version of PPS-80. If you buy SmallTalk/V you get off for less money, you get the Mac interface, and you get a very reasonable liscensing agreement if you want to distribute applications. What you do not get is all those extra tools, though Barbara Noparstak of Digitalk assured me that Digitalk is porting the Goodies packages from their PC version to the Mac. Jim Anderson of Digitalk also mentioned a few other nifty tools we might expect to see eventually, like native code generators (talk about speed!) and direct-manipulation interface constructors (a subject near to my heart). Oh yeah; with Digitalk you also get portability between the Mac and 286 machines. You also get some portability from 8086 PCs to the Mac, but it's pretty much one way because the little version of SmallTalk/V doesn't have a lot of the classes necessary to support typical code written on the Mac version. By the way, after using both, I bought SmallTalk/V. No reflection on ParcPlace, I just liked SmallTalk/V a little better; probably a combination of personal taste and price.