Re: Basic Questions

[address@hidden]

Interesting remark about the difference conceptually,
between GST command line oriented and Smalltalk with the GUI IDE on the other 
hand.

I suspect that the emacs support is actually an important feature for GST,
because it may conceptually give a lot of attention to its emacs support,
whereas for a Smalltalk implementation that uses its own GUI IDE such a thing 
is less of an issue.

As a test I compiled gnu smalltalk 3.2.91 to see whether the emacs support 
works.

It does ... 

With GNU Emacs 27.1 if I create a .emacs file (as the configure script suggests)

(mapc 'load (directory-files "/usr/emacs/share/emacs/site-lisp/site-start.d" t 
"\\.el\\'"))

which as far as I understand, is emacs language for loading the 
smalltalk-mode.el and gst-mode.el files,
then if I open a .st file in emacs it highlights selector names.

For example comments seem to be colored red, class names green, message names 
(selectors) blue,
block argument names in yellow.

The syntax highlighting works because the minibuffer of emacs (bottom line) 
indicates "Smalltalk",
for an example file that ends with .st.

Presumably the integration goes much further than that.  

For example gst has an --emacs-mode argument

   -V --verbose                  Show names of loaded files and execution stats.
      --emacs-mode               Execute as a `process' (from within Emacs)


----- Op 22 dec 2020 om 18:21 schreef Mark Bratcher mdbratch@gmail.com:

> HI Gary
> 
> To add to the answers provided so far, regarding the question of whether gst 
> has
> a separate editor mode… are you referring to something stated in the GST
> documentation or the Smalltalk 80 document? Smalltalk, in its purest form, is 
> a
> whole GUI IDE, which of course includes built in editing, class browsing, etc.
> The idea is that you develop and execute your Smalltalk program all within 
> that
> environment. Smalltalk 80 assumes this IDE.
> 
> GST is a command-line & text file based implementation of Smalltalk. You’re in
> the world of using text editors, like `vi` (which does have a decent syntax
> highlighter for Smalltalk) and doing things from command line. In my case, I
> created some makefiles to facilitate my gst development. I highly recommend
> learning about “packages”. If you bundle your code into packages, you can
> manage them easily, pulling them into your project. Here’s a link to an answer
> I provided on Stackoverflow which talks very briefly about packages and
> provides a link:
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37054929/using-extended-classes-in-gst-gnu-smalltalk/37076801#37076801.
> 
> I’ve used Seaside and the associated web server, so I know that works. You 
> just
> need to find and read all the information about setting it up. If you search,
> you’ll find some good online information regarding setup.
> 
> Mark
> 
> Sent from [ https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=550986 | Mail ] for 
> Windows
> 10
> 
> From: [ mailto:help-smalltalk@gnu.org | Derek Zhou via Users mailing list for
> the GNU Smalltalk environment ]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 22, 2020 10:22 AM
> To: [ mailto:help-smalltalk@gnu.org | help-smalltalk@gnu.org ]
> Subject: Re: Basic Questions
> 
> Gary Highberger writes:
> 
>> I'm teaching myself GNU Smalltalk.
> 
>> • Dual boot Macbook Air running Ubuntu 20.04
> 
>> • GST 3.2.5
> 
>> • Documentation:
> 
>> https://www.gnu.org/software/smalltalk/manual/gst.txt
> 
>> Bluebook
> 
>> 
> 
>> 1. Does Emacs support gst? Neither .st file text highlighting nor
> 
>> interactor mode appear to work. The documentation says gst works with Emacs.
> 
> Yes. The gst source distribution contains smalltalk-mode. Or you can use
> 
> the newer version smalltalk-mode from ELPA:
> 
> M-x package-install smalltalk-mode
> 
>> 
> 
>> 2. Is pi and Float supported? The class extend example (area and
> 
>> circumference methods) doesn't work.
> 
> Yes. pi is not pre-defined though.
> 
>> 
> 
>> 3. Does gst have a separate editor mode? The documentation implies it does.
> 
>> 
> 
> It has a gst-mode that make smalltalk REPL works in emacs. However it is
> 
> not maintained for a long time so I don't know. Ro are you talking about
> 
> somethine else?
> 
>> 4. I'm using vim as my editor and loading my program using FileStream
> 
>> fileIn: 'myfile.st'. I'm debugging using printNl. Is this the best way? Vim
> 
>> knows st keywords.
> 
> That works too.
> 
>> 
> 
>> 5. Does the web server, swazoo, and framework, seaside, work? I couldn't
> 
>> get them to run.
> 
> Yes. However I haven't try that for a long time.
> 
>> 
> 
>> 6. My application is realtime machinery control with web page UI.
> 
>> 
> 
>> 7. Does gst-browser work?
> 
> You mean the gtk GUI? Yes, but I am afraid not many people use that so
> 
> get help is not easy.
> 
> Derek