Thanks (you all).
Actually it is currently using an iPad-specific controller (the split view you see when the screen orientation changes), but most things run on iPhone, although the screen estate may be a problem as it is right now. The simulator only provides 50% and 100% scaling, so I recorded at 50% as my screen is not big enough to display everything in portrait mode.
It is currently just an experiment, in the first place trying out how to make good use of the iPhone OS interface to make Smalltalk a bit more sexy on the one hand, and finding out how to adapt such an environment to a mobile platform. (Probably the upcoming iWork suite for iPad will give me lots of inspiration). I also want to make this thing simple to use. For instance the protocol / method list for Object is long, so I am experimenting with this, and other things like search, ... So in the first place I want to make it a tool for browsing and searching existing code (sort of documentation companion).
A next challenge would be an interface to edit code and try it out. It also depends in part on the target. Suppose the code is meant for simple (or novice, which is not completely the same) usage where you can only edit scripts or simple classes in your proper environment (e.g. a namespace) on the server (of course we have no real protection like sandboxing, limiting memory per user process, security, ... yet) or locally (for instance with Squeak like Eliot remarked), or a combination.
For simple usage, we might want filters when browsing / searching the standard library, for instance to retrieve only basic classes / methods (just count the zillions of Collection subclasses in a standard VW image).
So a lot of questions with few answers so far.
The iPhone SDK has a nice SAX XML parser: you just give it an URL, ask it to start. It manages all the connection issues and starts doing the normal callbacks (start element, ...). Nice. On the server, I implemented a simple servlet (currently just about 10 methods) responding to requests (give subclasses, class description, ...). I currently use the VW TinyHttp server as I have used it several years ago, so I did not have think about that issue at this moment, allowing me to focus on the iPhone / iPad, but it is currently for all practical purposes independent of VW, Squeak, at least when browsing / searching code.
I updated the movie, It now illustrates the speed when browsing different classes. Currently it accesses the server (running locally) every time when switching between classes or class and instance views. Of course, I can not compare the performance of the simulator with the real thing.
michel
On 25 Mar 2010, at 15:36, Alan Wostenberg wrote:
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