[comp.lang.smalltalk] Digitalk Smalltalk/V for Mac

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.