Scratch questions

Hi All, i am pretty new around here. Glad to see Squeak is so active still.

 I have been looking at new Squeak apps like Sophie and Scratch.
pretty cool! makes me want to learn Smalltalk.  Out of curiosity I
have read some of the FAQs about how to deploy a Squeak application. i
understand about image files,  the VM, and the basics.

 I was wondering about Scratch in particular. It seems really nicely
done. i am impressed because it's so nice looking and it launches
really fast too.

1) How do they get it to launch so fast? It launches in <1 second on
my system. In comparison,  Squeak 3.9 takes like 15 seconds to launch.
Sophie takes about 6 seconds. Why the disparity between these 3
examples?

2) The Scratch user interface is attractive and responsive. Is that
Morphic, or MVC or some other UI toolkit?

Thanks,

Alex Rice
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Alex Rice wrote: Squeak 3.9 and Sophie uses other font rendering which could slow start
up time.
Sophie uses Tweak which is another GUI.
Scratch is built in Squeak 3.4.
> 2) The Scratch user interface is attractive and responsive. Is that
> Morphic, or MVC or some other UI toolkit?
>
>  
Scratch is morphic.
> Thanks,
>
> Alex Rice
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>
>  

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karl wrote:
> Squeak 3.9 and Sophie uses other font rendering which could slow start
> up time.
> Sophie uses Tweak which is another GUI.
> Scratch is built in Squeak 3.4.

Squeak 2.8

Just shows how far Squeak, especially with + Tweak has gone the path to
layers upon layers of complexity...
In Sophie's case the longest part of the startup though is the scanning
of System fonts, we really need some caching mechanism.

Michael
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On 8/29/07, Alex Rice <[hidden email]> wrote:
> 1) How do they get it to launch so fast? It launches in <1 second on
> my system. In comparison,  Squeak 3.9 takes like 15 seconds to launch.
> Sophie takes about 6 seconds. Why the disparity between these 3
> examples?

I must have a fast computer.  I tried a variety of 3.9 images and it
took anywhere from 3-5 seconds.  3.10, on the other hand, takes a
second.  Shrinking the image must make it faster to start it up.

-Ralph
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Ralph, how do you shrink an  image? I have never done it  maybe that's
why Squeak is so slow to launch (2 Ghz dual core  w/ 2 GB RAM it
should launch faster)

I searched the wiki and see methods like majorShrink, condenseChanges,
majorShink, etc. This sounds like some dark arts?

Thanks, Alex


On 8/29/07, Ralph Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote: _______________________________________________
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On Aug 29, 2007, at 7:29 AM, Alex Rice wrote:

> 1) How do they get it to launch so fast? It launches in <1 second on
> my system. In comparison,  Squeak 3.9 takes like 15 seconds to launch.
> Sophie takes about 6 seconds. Why the disparity between these 3
> examples?

Hi Alex,

I think I saw in another thread that you are using Windows. How are  
you launching Squeak?

My experience on Windows is that if you launch Squeak.exe by double-
clicking, it can take a while to bring up the dialog where you can  
choose an image. However, if you drag an image file onto Squeak.exe,  
or use a batch file to pass it as a parameter, the image starts up  
much faster.

I remember somebody explaining why this happened on squeak-dev some  
time ago, but I'm not sure where.

Hope this helps,
Benjamin Schroeder

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On Aug 29, 2007, at 5:42 PM, Benjamin Schroeder wrote:

> My experience on Windows is that if you launch Squeak.exe by double-
> clicking, it can take a while to bring up the dialog where you can  
> choose an image. However, if you drag an image file onto  
> Squeak.exe, or use a batch file to pass it as a parameter, the  
> image starts up much faster.

I should add that associating .image files with Squeak.exe, then  
double-clicking on the image file, probably has the same effect.

Ben

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Double clicking in the image file with it associated is the best option IMHO

Enviado desde mi dispositivo inalámbrico BlackBerry®

-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Schroeder <[hidden email]>

Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:43:08
To:"A friendly place to get answers to even the most basic questions aboutSqueak." <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [Newbies] Scratch questions



On Aug 29, 2007, at 5:42 PM, Benjamin Schroeder wrote:

> My experience on Windows is that if you launch Squeak.exe by double-
> clicking, it can take a while to bring up the dialog where you can  
> choose an image. However, if you drag an image file onto  
> Squeak.exe, or use a batch file to pass it as a parameter, the  
> image starts up much faster.

I should add that associating .image files with Squeak.exe, then  
double-clicking on the image file, probably has the same effect.

Ben

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On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 08:43:08 -0700, Benjamin Schroeder  
<[hidden email]> wrote:

For what it's worth, on my 2 Ghz Core Duo, Squeak starts almost instantly  
no matter what. The killer seems to be Squeak not knowing what image file  
to use. On a 3Ghz machine it takes 15 seconds. (Under Windows. Under  
Linux, an old 1Ghz machine pops Squeak up in a second or two.)
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I believe that if you search for and use the latest windows executable (3.9.2 is the version I'm using, although there appear to be 3.10.x versions for windows available as well), then it will start very quickly by just double clicking squeak.exe, and that the reason is very similar to what you have written.  It was just fixed in either 3.9.1 or 3.9.2 (after being 'broken' for a very long time).

These are available at: http://www.squeakvm.org/win32/ .

-Chris

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