Squeak 5 all-in-one OS X image saving/sources

On my iMac, with the Squeak 5 all-in-one I get a rather annoying issue if I want to
a) save an image other than buried deep in the package bowels; it would be nice if we could provide an option for saving an image outside the current home directory.
b) after saving an image, extracting it + changes to where I wanted it to live, the system reported finding no sources file because it was expecting to find it at ‘directory containing all-in-one package’ and it was buried deep in the package bowels.

That seems to me to be a rather infelicitous combination, especially for a new user; "hell I just saved this image thing and now I can’t find it anywhere!” I imagine we need to add another sources-path option to handle this but maybe there is some mac bundle magic involved too?

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Dreams are free, but you get soaked on the connect time.

Also notable perhaps is that if one chooses "save as new version" from the world menu, at next launch the all-in-one still loads the original image. Then one must try to extricate the "new version" from the all in one package, and run into the issues Tim mentions below. (Not that I just did this the other day. ;) )

Sent from a small device

I think of the All-in-One as analagous to the "Try Ubuntu" option on
the Ubuntu boot CD.  You can't really save anything, nor should it try
to support that because its not a good way to use a computer.

All-in-One is "Try Squeak", we should give them a "Install Squeak" so
they can be properly set up and empowered.


On Mon, Aug 24, 2015 at 8:27 PM, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi all--

     Tim writes:

> ...it would be nice if we could provide an option for saving an image
> outside the current home directory.

     Indeed. As a new user I would expect the host platform's
file-saving dialog to open at that point, especially since the host
platform's file-opening dialog opens on system start, in situations
where the system doesn't know which image to open.

> ...after saving an image, extracting it + changes to where I wanted
> it to live, the system reported finding no sources file because it
> was expecting to find it at ‘directory containing all-in-one package’
> and it was buried deep in the package bowels.

     Hm, I don't see those words in the dialog that the system opens.
Rather, it said it was expecting to find the sources file either in the
same location as the image file, or as a sibling to the app folder.

     Now that the all-in-one structure has settled down, I would change
the virtual machine to check instead for the sources file where it
probably is (<app>/Contents/Resources instead of <app>). I don't see
much point in checking to see if it's in the same location as the image
file. In any case, there's no host-dependent bundle magic involved; we
just happen to have an all-in-one structure that satisfies the union of
our host platform constraints. I think the all-in-one format can be
useful generally, not just for initial tryouts as Chris suggests.


-C

p.s.

     Of course, in addition to getting the above right, I'll take this
opportunity to advocate again for launching the system from a web
browser. Make a host-dependent app which just starts a headless web
server, and opens the user's preferred web browser on a site served by
that server. On that site you can have good descriptions of available
images, controls for starting and stopping them, what Squeak is in the
first place, links to other sites for background, etc. This can be done
as a host-dependent app that is one more layer around the all-in-one.
I'm doing it for the Context distribution of Squeak.

     We'd get a lot of value from accommodating the new user's Favorite
Web Browser and Favorite Text Editor.

--
Craig Latta
netjam.org
+31   6 2757 7177 (SMS ok)
+ 1 415  287 3547 (no SMS)

On 25.08.2015, at 03:27, tim Rowledge <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> On my iMac, with the Squeak 5 all-in-one I get a rather annoying issue if I want to
> a) save an image other than buried deep in the package bowels; it would be nice if we could provide an option for saving an image outside the current home directory.
> b) after saving an image, extracting it + changes to where I wanted it to live, the system reported finding no sources file because it was expecting to find it at ‘directory containing all-in-one package’ and it was buried deep in the package bowels.
>
> That seems to me to be a rather infelicitous combination, especially for a new user; "hell I just saved this image thing and now I can’t find it anywhere!” I imagine we need to add another sources-path option to handle this but maybe there is some mac bundle magic involved too?

The way we handle that in Etoys is to treat the “built-in” image as read-only. The working directory (FileDirectory default) is *not* the image directory, but (on a Mac at least) $HOME/Documents/Etoys. Saving the image will save to that directory.

What we have not done on a Mac is that when you double-click the VM, it should load the last image saved. We did that on the OLPC XO though - its launcher shell script checks if there is an image in the documents directory (meaning the user saved it) and it launches that one. Otherwise it launches the bundled image.

I’m pretty sure we can have our cake and eat it too ...

- Bert -

Hi Bert--

> What we have not done on a Mac is that when you double-click the VM,
> it should load the last image saved.

     I like that idea.

> I’m pretty sure we can have our cake and eat it too ...

     Yes, although I'd like to make the all-in-one app as
self-sufficient as possible (specifically, resistant to arbitrary
changes in the filesystem outside the app folder).


-C

--
Craig Latta
netjam.org
+31   6 2757 7177 (SMS ok)
+ 1 415  287 3547 (no SMS)