Dolphin newbie

Some obviously newbie questions:

1)Dolphin duznt work with DX, duz it? I dont know DX yet, but I know
I'll need to get there. Must Dolphin use OpenGL?

2) Dolphin tuts all placed in Word document. As I go from Word to
Dolphin, Dolphin repaints really slowly. WinME. Is this typical for
ST?

3)I'm confused-is a finished program capable of being made into an
.exe?

4) I still have a long ways to go w/ learning C++. This is only a
hobby for me, and I'm getting serious again. Am I crazy to waste time
on this Dolphin, if I just want to learn to write simple games? I know
someone on this forum wrote a very simple tank game, but I take it
that it was more an excercize than a commercial undertaking. I only
occasionally play w/ Dolphin, because I find it amusing. The same
createWindow thing takes 5? lines, as opposed to pages in VC++.
Amazing. But I fear w/ ST's ease of use will come limitations.
 I started playing w/ Dolphin last Thanksgiving, but the downloaded
version didnt really match the tuts. I got disgusted. Now I'm going
over what I tried to learn before, its making more sense.

5) Is ST only good as a prototype language? Why should Dolphin be any
better than the MT vesion, or Squeak? This is NOT meant to start a
flame or whatnot. Its a serious question and I'd appreciate it if
someone would give a thoughtful answer.


7)[teresa moveLeft:5. teresa position x>simon position x] whileTrue.
  Isnt this an example of do..while? If I understood correctly, that's
what it is, but ST people maybe dont like to talk C++?
 Truly amazing how simple things are in ST compared to C++. I realize
everyone of u is miles ahead of me- but I'd appreciate any answers
given.

> 1)Dolphin duznt work with DX, duz it? I dont know DX yet, but I know
> I'll need to get there. Must Dolphin use OpenGL?

Dolphin did understand DirectX, and (as resent posts suggest), still has
some capabilities in that area - the old packages load, and some things even
work.  There are commercial alternatives for Dolphin; Google knows more than
I do about them :)


> 2) Dolphin tuts all placed in Word document. As I go from Word to
> Dolphin, Dolphin repaints really slowly. WinME. Is this typical for
> ST?

That sounds like a problem in older versions: something (IIRC it was
overlapped calls) caused the VM to yield a little too readily.   Ran along
side of a CPU hog like Word or Access (perhaps the ultimate CPU hog), and at
least one version of Dolphin will yield itself almost into inaction.


> 3)I'm confused-is a finished program capable of being made into an
> .exe?

Yes.  Read about "Lagoon".  It's quite slick.


> 4) I still have a long ways to go w/ learning C++. This is only a
> hobby for me, and I'm getting serious again. Am I crazy to waste time
> on this Dolphin, if I just want to learn to write simple games?

Please, learn Smalltalk.  Even if you stick with C++/Java/C#/... (let's just
call them all C*), you will still write better programs.  Be warned
though<g>, that you will eventually become quite frustrated with C*'s
obsession with detail.  I have a few C++ projects, pretty much all converted
from MSVC to MinGW by way of Dev-C++, and generally enjoy working on them,
but there is no substitute for Smalltalk for everyday work.

> I know
> someone on this forum wrote a very simple tank game, but I take it
> that it was more an excercize than a commercial undertaking. I only
> occasionally play w/ Dolphin, because I find it amusing. The same
> createWindow thing takes 5? lines, as opposed to pages in VC++.
> Amazing. But I fear w/ ST's ease of use will come limitations.

Yes, it will limit your time to market, bug count, blood pressure, etc. :)


> 5) Is ST only good as a prototype language?

No.  I have multiple Dolphin-based systems in real use.


> Why should Dolphin be any
> better than the MT vesion, or Squeak?

<personalOpinon>Dolphin is radically better than MT, in all areas except
"vocabulary" in generating various kinds of executables, and perhaps speed.
About a year ago, I downloaded the MT demo, and was shocked at how much
wasn't present.  It has loyal users, but I just don't see the attraction.
As an example, I had to manually arrange subviews in the debugger in order
to get something useable.  It should be very easy for them to fix it, and
the gains from programming in the debugger are HUGE, but not so much if I
have to resize debugger panes every time the thing opens.  Please count me
as one of the dis-believers in eXtreme Programming though, but that's a
discussion for _after_ you get hooked on Smalltalk :)

Dolphin is not "better" than Squeak so much as it is different than Squeak.
With that said, I prefer using Dolphin to using Squeak, but I use both.  In
addition to simply being sufficiently stable to use for daily work, Squeak
has readily obtainable VM source code, and runs natively on Linux.  That's
hard to completely ignore.</personalOpinon>


> 7)[teresa moveLeft:5. teresa position x>simon position x] whileTrue.
>   Isnt this an example of do..while? If I understood correctly, that's
> what it is, but ST people maybe dont like to talk C++?

Speaking for myself, I don't mind having a choice of control structures.
What I mind is dealing with static typing when it's not necessary.


>  Truly amazing how simple things are in ST compared to C++. I realize
> everyone of u is miles ahead of me- but I'd appreciate any answers
> given.

Welcome aboard.

Have a good one,

Bill

--
Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
[hidden email]

"wborg" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> 3)I'm confused-is a finished program capable of being made into an
> .exe?

yap.

> 5) Is ST only good as a prototype language? Why should Dolphin be any

It is definitely not only a prototype language. See:

http://www.object-arts.co.uk/wiki/html/Dolphin/ApplicationsWrittenInDolphin.
htm

for some examples.

rush
--
http://www.templatetamer.com/

Rush: the link to a page showing practical apps has been stinkola for 2 days.
 Comes up as-page cant be displayed-

Then the Object-Arts link offered w/ UK suffix wont work either.
I'll try another day.(object-arts.com DUZ work,tho)

"wborg" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> Rush: the link to a page showing practical apps has been stinkola for 2
days.
>  Comes up as-page cant be displayed-
>
> Then the Object-Arts link offered w/ UK suffix wont work either.
> I'll try another day.(object-arts.com DUZ work,tho)

the news had cutted ending .htm from the url into the next line, just
concatenate it, and url should work fine.

rush
--
http://www.templatetamer.com/

"wborg" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> Some obviously newbie questions:
>
> 1)Dolphin duznt work with DX, duz it? I dont know DX yet, but I know
> I'll need to get there. Must Dolphin use OpenGL?

There is an old DirectX package floating around.  See Andy's previous
posting for more info.  I think some people have used the Dolphin ActiveX
wizzard to wrap newer versions of DirectX, search the group for more info.
There is also an OpenGL framework from Creative Computing,
http://www.creative-computing-inc.com/ .  There is also the
DoubleBufferedView I used in my game.  I was impressed with its performance
for my needs.

> 2) Dolphin tuts all placed in Word document. As I go from Word to
> Dolphin, Dolphin repaints really slowly. WinME. Is this typical for
> ST?

Your machine may be stressed.  You may not have enough RAM to run Word with
a big document and Dolphin comfortably concurrently.  Win9x (this includes
ME) are also not the best at handling resources.  I don't see slow repaints
in Dolphin unless I am REALLY pushing my machine with lots of programs using
hundreds of megs of RAM.  Your experience will depend upon your machine.

> 3)I'm confused-is a finished program capable of being made into an
> .exe?

If you buy the Prefessional Edition it can.

> 4) I still have a long ways to go w/ learning C++. This is only a
> hobby for me, and I'm getting serious again. Am I crazy to waste time
> on this Dolphin, if I just want to learn to write simple games? I know
> someone on this forum wrote a very simple tank game, but I take it
> that it was more an excercize than a commercial undertaking. I only
> occasionally play w/ Dolphin, because I find it amusing. The same
> createWindow thing takes 5? lines, as opposed to pages in VC++.
> Amazing. But I fear w/ ST's ease of use will come limitations.

You are correct that my game was not a commercial endeavor.  However it does
perform well on a fast computer.  My next version may perform even better as
I have streamlined some code.  I used the DoubleBufferedView for my
graphics.  However I don't think it would be too difficult to migrate my
game to use DirectX if I chose too.  The nice thing is I can keep it simple
now for prototyping and experimenting, and then migrate if needed for
performance reasons.  When I started writing my game I was actually not sure
if Dolphin would be up to the performance requirements.  However I have been
pleasantly surprised.  I haven't even felt compelled to optimize very much
yet.

I use Dolphin at work and at home.  I really like it.  However it may not be
the absolute fastest Smalltalk (which is may depend upon who's benchmarks
you run), that has not been a problem for me yet.  If I ever developed
something in Dolphin and just could not get the speed I needed first I would
try to optimize my code then I would look at SmalltalkMT.  Smalltalk MT is a
compiled Smalltalk and has a theoretical reputation for speed.  The last
time I looked at Smalltalk MT I did not like the development environment.
It is also more than twice the cost of Dolphin for commercial use (though
there is a $100 non-commercial edition).  They also don't seem to have as
visible a user community on-line.  Lately they seem to be pushing the idea
of writing games in MT using DirectX, so you might take a look at their
demos.  For now the additional benefits (IDE, community, add-on tools, and
cost) of Dolphin are more important than pure speed to me.

>  I started playing w/ Dolphin last Thanksgiving, but the downloaded
> version didnt really match the tuts. I got disgusted. Now I'm going
> over what I tried to learn before, its making more sense.

I think OA has taken a bit of heat for the lag in the documentation.  I can
see how that could confuse a new user.  However sometimes it just takes time
to grasp some concepts.  It took me quite a bit of muddling before I began
to understand MVP in Dolphin.

> 5) Is ST only good as a prototype language? Why should Dolphin be any
> better than the MT vesion, or Squeak? This is NOT meant to start a
> flame or whatnot. Its a serious question and I'd appreciate it if
> someone would give a thoughtful answer.

Smalltalk is a good prototype language, but is certainly not limited to
that.  My day job is developing a non-trivial commercial application using
Dolphin.  It has given my company great power and flexibility.

Have you seen MT or Squeak?  Try them out and see what you think.  As I said
above I did not care for the IDE in MT, however that may be more of an issue
of personal taste.  I have never been able to find much of a Smalltalk MT
user community on-line.  Beyond that I don't have enough experience to
comment on MT.  Squeak has different goals from Dolphin.  I am used to a
normal Windows interface (so are my end users), Squeak has different ideas
about that.  You just need to decide what your priorities are and find the
Smalltalk that best suites them.  I think Dolphin is a really good general
purpose Windows Smalltalk.  Different Smalltalks will excel in different
areas.

Chris

"Christopher J. Demers" <[hidden email]> wrote in
message news:bac0hd$ruk8l$[hidden email]...
>
> Your machine may be stressed.  You may not have enough RAM to run Word
with
> a big document and Dolphin comfortably concurrently.  Win9x (this includes
> ME) are also not the best at handling resources.  I don't see slow
repaints
> in Dolphin unless I am REALLY pushing my machine with lots of programs
using
> hundreds of megs of RAM.  Your experience will depend upon your machine.

I have started seeing slow repaints in Dolphin since 5.1.

"Mark Wilden" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> "Christopher J. Demers" <[hidden email]> wrote in
> message news:bac0hd$ruk8l$[hidden email]...
> >
> > Your machine may be stressed.  You may not have enough RAM to run Word
> with
> > a big document and Dolphin comfortably concurrently.  Win9x (this
includes
> > ME) are also not the best at handling resources.  I don't see slow
> repaints
> > in Dolphin unless I am REALLY pushing my machine with lots of programs
> using
> > hundreds of megs of RAM.  Your experience will depend upon your machine.
>
> I have started seeing slow repaints in Dolphin since 5.1.

Most of my historical experience is obviously with versions < 5.1, however I
have used 5.1 for a few days and have not seen slow repaints (yet).  I am
using a Xeon 1.8GHz with 512MB of RAM at work and a Pentium 4 2.4GHz with
512MB of RAM at home, both running Windows XP.  What machine and OS are you
running on?

You might try checking the Process Monitor in Dolphin to see if you have any
runaway processes hanging around to slow things down.  I seem to recall
either a late 5.1 RC or an  early 5.1 release having an extra process
floating around.  I think that a clean Dolphin image should have 5
processes.  If you use Tools+ you will have 6 (the Formatter).

I think Chris Uppal had a problem with a delay upon closing workspaces in
D5.1 that he did not experience in D5.0.  I don't recall if that was ever
fully understood and/or fixed.  Perhaps that is related.

As I gain more practical experience with 5.1 I will post if I notice any
problems.

Chris

Chris, Mark

Chris wrote in message news:bae3eb$s4lg0$[hidden email]...
> ...
> I think Chris Uppal had a problem with a delay upon closing workspaces in
> D5.1 that he did not experience in D5.0.  I don't recall if that was ever
> fully understood and/or fixed.  Perhaps that is related.
>

It may be, especially with a large numger of windows open. A patch is
available at:

http://www.object-arts.com/Lib/Update/Dolphin/5.1/1249.st

Regards

Blair