an online class hierarchy?

Hello,

I'm trying to find out if there is an online document that outlines the
Dolphin ST class hierarchy.  I'd like to see what classes are available
along with class/instance variables and methods.

Thanks,
Tom

Tom,

> I'm trying to find out if there is an online document that outlines
> the Dolphin ST class hierarchy.  I'd like to see what classes are
> available along with class/instance variables and methods.

There isn't such a document. There are a large number of classes and
just a print out (PDF or whatever) of definitions and class comments
would run to many hundreds of pages.

Why don't you download and install the trial version and you'll be able
to browse all of the hierarchy including source.

http://www.object-arts.com/Trial/

Best regards

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

Appreciate it Andy... I know I should have mentioned that I could do that...
:-)

Because of two reasons.  Primarily I don't want to, I just want to see the
docs.  But also because that starts the trial period and I'm forced into
acting not on my time schedule but on somebody else's time schedule.  Then
of course I have to ask everybody else I want to discuss it with to download
and install the trial package, that's not practical.

Look for instance if I wanted information on .Net's button class:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfsystemwindowsformsbuttonclasstopic.asp

I mean I will install it if I have to but I was hoping I could avoid it.

Thanks,
Tom

"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

Tom,
If you just want to see text (or hypertext) forever, you can download the
demo version and download this:

http://www.night.dircon.co.uk/dolphin/index.html

Diego

"DiegoC" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...
> Tom,
> If you just want to see text (or hypertext) forever, you can download the
> demo version and download this:
>
> http://www.night.dircon.co.uk/dolphin/index.html

Thanks Diego.  It isn't that I want to read hypertext "forever" but I don't
see how it can hurt to see some documentation or to sit in a park on a nice
day and read a printed copy.

Tom

Diego,

> If you just want to see text (or hypertext) forever, you can download
> the demo version and download this:
>
> http://www.night.dircon.co.uk/dolphin/index.html

Actually, I tried using this to dump off the HTML for the contents of a
5.1.4 Pro image so that Tom could see it. However, there are some
problems with the formatting which I didn't have time to look into
(sorry Tom).

Best regards,


Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

Andy,

> Actually, I tried using this to dump off the HTML for the contents of
> a
> 5.1.4 Pro image so that Tom could see it. However, there are some
> problems with the formatting which I didn't have time to look into
> (sorry Tom).

One of my goodies can easily be persuaded to produce an rtf document
containing the interface for a specific class. See the following for an
example of the output for Object (60K)

http://www.idb.me.uk/files/object.rtf

If you OK it I could produce one for each class in the image and make them
available online.  Could be a big download though.

A class hierarchy document would have to be produced as well, to use as a
sort of index, but that shouldn't be too difficult.

--
Ian

Use the Reply-To address to contact me.
Mail sent to the From address is ignored.

Ian,

Well I've no problem with you running all the Dolphin classes through
the mangle  but *surely* the resultant file would be far too huge for
normal humans to read in the park? Perhaps the best thing would be to
wait for Tom to comment about what classes and associated info he
thinks would be useful in such a download?

Best regards,

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

I wrote

>   Could be a big download though.

Not too bad actually.  A zipped interface dump of my working image, a DPro
image with all my goodies and some other bits and pieces, contains 1509
files and takes 2.07 MB

--
Ian

Use the Reply-To address to contact me.
Mail sent to the From address is ignored.

Andy,

> Well I've no problem with you running all the Dolphin classes through
> the mangle  but *surely* the resultant file would be far too huge for
> normal humans to read in the park?

See my other post for the approximate file size.

<nostalgia> The original printed documentation (a book) for Smalltalk/V (c
1987) contained a complete listing of all the classes in the image formatted
in a very similar way to the output from my goodie.  I found it quite useful
when learning Smalltalk - it didn't get taken into the park but used to get
read a lot during tea/lunch breaks at work. (and occasionally between those
times as well :-))

--
Ian

Use the Reply-To address to contact me.
Mail sent to the From address is ignored.

Ian,

> I wrote
>
> >   Could be a big download though.
>
> Not too bad actually.  A zipped interface dump of my working image, a
> DPro image with all my goodies and some other bits and pieces,
> contains 1509 files and takes 2.07 MB

Groovy. We can host it here if you want to save on bandwidth. I guess
PDFs would be larger?

Best regards

Andy Bower
Dolphin Support
www.object-arts.com

Andy,

> Well I've no problem with you running all the Dolphin classes through
> the mangle  but *surely* the resultant file would be far too huge for
> normal humans to read in the park? Perhaps the best thing would be to
> wait for Tom to comment about what classes and associated info he
> thinks would be useful in such a download?

Feel free to use my Package Documentation goodie - it's only fair, you
wrote the tricky parts :)  If all goes well, it should add an IDE
extension to the package browser that, courtesy of its multiple
selection abilities, will allow you to generate docs for selected
packages.  In that mode, it still produces one file per package.

Each file contains a table of contents.  Clearly the results are only as
good as the comments.  FWIW, I find package comments to be most useful
for "how-to" documention.  The more useful comments are generally so
littered with HTML tags that I generate the docs in self defense.

Have a good one,

Bill

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

"Andy Bower" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

> Actually, I tried using this to dump off the HTML for the contents of a
> 5.1.4 Pro image so that Tom could see it. However, there are some
> problems with the formatting which I didn't have time to look into
> (sorry Tom).

Well that was bad news but I note that better news has followed in other
replies.  Primarily I am (probably) most interested in the MVP aspect so I'd
like to see what the base model and view provide along with whatever they
are subclassed from of course.  Ultimately what happens when browsing docs
however is something strikes ones interest and that leads to something which
then leads to something else.  I'll guess that I wouldn't wander too deeply
into the representations of numerics, booleans. stacks, queues,
linked-lists, et. al.  I can pretty much guess how they work.

Ultimately I would need to be able to produce a listview containing the
names and id's of customers (for instance.)  Then choosing from the list
fetch, edit and then save the properties of that customer.  The kinds of
things that a typical business would expect out of typical software.  The
companies are already doing these things in C++, VB6 and what have you.
Some are considering a migration to C# or VB.Net.  I can't point at a
single-user version of Etch-A-Sketch and suggest they consider using
Smalltalk based upon that.  Well, I _can_ suggest it but they aren't likely
to do it.

Similarly pointing out "IBM uses it" doesn't mean much to companies one
one-millionth the size.  IBM uses everything somewhere.

Thanks,
Tom

Andy,

> Groovy.

???? :-)

> We can host it here if you want to save on bandwidth.

I've uploaded it to my website at

http://www.idb.me.uk/files/dolphin514interface.zip

It contains 1332 files and is 1.94 MB.  The rtf files are in the same layout
as the example I posted earlier with the addition of a hierarchy at the
start of each file that shows the classes superclasses up to Object.

I'm not too worried about bandwith but you can, obviously, put a copy on the
OA web site if you think it will be easier to find.

> I guess PDFs would be larger?

Ummm, probably.  The funny thing I that I nearly downloaded a
freeware/shareware pdf creator the other day - I don't know if it would
convert rtf documents though.

A single pdf document would probably be better, especially as it would
include all the files and an index, so if anyone has a tool that could
create one from the rtf files ......

--
Ian

Use the Reply-To address to contact me.
Mail sent to the From address is ignored.

Tom,

> Well that was bad news but I note that better news has followed in
> other replies.  Primarily I am (probably) most interested in the MVP
> aspect so I'd like to see what the base model and view provide along
> with whatever they are subclassed from of course.  Ultimately what
> happens when browsing docs however is something strikes ones interest
> and that leads to something which then leads to something else.  I'll
> guess that I wouldn't wander too deeply into the representations of
> numerics, booleans. stacks, queues, linked-lists, et. al.  I can
> pretty much guess how they work.

I really think you may have a lot of trouble getting much of an overall
picture of something like MVP from any documentation.  Smalltalk tends to be
written using lots of short methods, anything with more that 5 lines of code
is considered "wordy" :-), so trying to follow what's happening on paper can
be very tortuous.  You've really, IMHO, got to sit down and experiment with
a live image, _that's_ when you see the power of the language.

> Ultimately I would need to be able to produce a listview containing
> the names and id's of customers (for instance.)  Then choosing from
> the list fetch, edit and then save the properties of that customer.

I, and no doubt a lot of others here, could write a prototype demo of that
in Dolphin if you're interested.  It would be a bit simplified, data
persistence in a file rather than a database for instance, but would
probably give you a better idea of what's involved than reading through
documents.  Interested?, I've got a quarter of an hour to spare tomorrow :-)
I'll even add some comments to the code - a major concession for me these
days!

--
Ian

Use the Reply-To address to contact me.
Mail sent to the From address is ignored.

Tom,

> Well that was bad news but I note that better news has followed in other
> replies.  Primarily I am (probably) most interested in the MVP aspect so I'd
> like to see what the base model and view provide along with whatever they
> are subclassed from of course.  Ultimately what happens when browsing docs
> however is something strikes ones interest and that leads to something which
> then leads to something else.  I'll guess that I wouldn't wander too deeply
> into the representations of numerics, booleans. stacks, queues,
> linked-lists, et. al.  I can pretty much guess how they work.

It sounds as though you are already aware that you can see how they work
from the trial version.  I probably also do not need to tell you that
the code is often more informative than the method-level comments.


> Ultimately I would need to be able to produce a listview containing the
> names and id's of customers (for instance.)  Then choosing from the list
> fetch, edit and then save the properties of that customer.

You might want to look at Ted Bracht's book.  There are also some
tutorials lurking around; IIRC, a "challenge" here recently resulted in
something much like you probably want.

MVP starts out a little confusing, but after a while, you will begin to
wonder why it was so difficult.  I keep hoping we'll get better at
reducing the time for that to happen.  Trust me that it does happen.



 > The kinds of
> things that a typical business would expect out of typical software.  The
> companies are already doing these things in C++, VB6 and what have you.
> Some are considering a migration to C# or VB.Net.  I can't point at a
> single-user version of Etch-A-Sketch and suggest they consider using
> Smalltalk based upon that.  Well, I _can_ suggest it but they aren't likely
> to do it.

Does this make you a Smalltalker trying to convert a shop?  Are you an
employee or consultant/other?  I spotted Smalltalk long before I was
able to afford it, either financially or in time to learn it.  The price
dropped first thank to a Digitalk educational discount: $50 for ST/V
DOS.  I spent a while trying to do things with, setting _very_ short
deadlines for switching to things that I knew how to use.  One day I
actually beat the deadline, and I was hooked :)  By that time, ST/V Win
16 hit (also educationally discounted) $100.  That was starting to reach
its limits, or at least the limits of what I could do with it at the
time, when Dolphin came along.  Then I bet the farm on my ability to use
Smalltalk to deliver what is now my most productive cash cow.  It might
be more accurate to say that I bet the farm that I would not be able to
do it any other way, and I suspect I was correct.

Most C* developers are not going to see the benefits of Smalltalk, and
many don't even want to try to see it.  If you can get anything based on
Smalltalk in front of them, it seems best to first let them observe that
"Tim's thing doesn't crash".  Make some changes in a few minutes and let
them observe that it still doesn't crash.  Then get them to agree to
building something sufficiently complex that things will eventually go
wrong.  Now you hit them with crash dumps, logs, and reflectivity
(introspection at least) to get the program to at least tell you what it
was doing at the time of an error or (very rarely) a crash.

Just my 2 asCents on the subject.


> Similarly pointing out "IBM uses it" doesn't mean much to companies one
> one-millionth the size.  IBM uses everything somewhere.

The financial industry is a good source of success stories.  The broker
who can sell this AM's newest derivatives is the one making money.  I
haven't checked in a while, but JWARS and FedEx at least were projects
to mention.  I like to run these things down immediately before
inserting my foot in my mouth though =:0

In general, take a look at http://www.whysmalltalk.com.

Happy Smalltalking!

Bill

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

"Ian Bartholomew" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:[hidden email]...

> I really think you may have a lot of trouble getting much of an overall
> picture of something like MVP from any documentation.

Appreciate the thought... I downloaded your zip file (moments ago).  I'm not
attempting to discover what MVP is.  I want to see what properties and
methods are offered.  I can see that addDependent will add an object to the
receiver's dependents and that it is available to all objects.  I can see
that dependents returns (answers) a collection of dependents.  That tells me
things.  I can see deepCopy and shallowCopy.  The concepts aren't unique to
ST, I just want to see where they are and what they are named.  I don't need
to see the code to know how it works, just that it exists.

> I, and no doubt a lot of others here, could write a prototype demo of that
> in Dolphin if you're interested.  It would be a bit simplified, data
> persistence in a file rather than a database for instance, but would
> probably give you a better idea of what's involved than reading through
> documents.  Interested?, I've got a quarter of an hour to spare tomorrow
> :-)
> I'll even add some comments to the code - a major concession for me these
> days!

Gosh that's a very nice offer but at least for now I won't need it.
Probably a great thing to add to a site somewhere though.  To do it "right"
however (meaning to sell the concept to a business person) it probably
should do something more than persist to a file.  Again I'm only trying to
point out that there isn't a language on Earth (that I'm aware of) that
can't persist to a file.  "Database code goes here" would actually be enough
if the only thing one did was add a few lines to access the database but
that can't be the case.  There are concurrency issues, there are "failure on
write" issues.  These things have to be handled and that isn't (I imagine)
just a few lines more than writing to a text file on personal hard drive.
One can't read the entire multiuser database in, modify a single object and
then persist the entire thing out again as is often done in a text file
demonstration.

I'll check the contents of your zip file shortly... thanks again,
Tom

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:ckk2v8$19qq$[hidden email]...

> It sounds as though you are already aware that you can see how they work
> from the trial version.  I probably also do not need to tell you that the
> code is often more informative than the method-level comments.

Hi Bill:  Stacks and queues work the same in all languages or I'll suggest
that they aren't stacks and queues.  If a stack class doesn't have push and
pop methods or something corresponding to them I'd be shocked. :-)  Ah... a
quick check of GNU ST reveals there is no stack or queue class.  And a FAQ
suggests using an OrderedCollection.  Now the question is did Dolphin add
these constructs?

In any case I'm not wondering about a queue... seriously I just need to see
what there is to work with.

> MVP starts out a little confusing, but after a while, you will begin to
> wonder why it was so difficult.  I keep hoping we'll get better at
> reducing the time for that to happen.  Trust me that it does happen.

Not a problem.  I'm not trying to sell myself on the concept.  Any
implementation has wiggle room and I'm interested in seeing what is being
handled "out-of-the-box".

> Does this make you a Smalltalker trying to convert a shop?  Are you an
> employee or consultant/other?

I'm a consultant and as such I always keep my options open.  ST isn't
something I just heard of, I bought my copy of the Byte Magazine "Smalltalk
issue" when it originally came out.  I've never written anything using it
but I had one of the earlier free versions of Dolphin installed a long time
ago.

> Most C* developers are not going to see the benefits of Smalltalk, and
> many don't even want to try to see it.

That attribute isn't limited to C developers :-)  The Ford dealership isn't
going to point you down the street to the Honda dealer.  I can't believe a C
developer wants their programs to crash, it's a recognized downside.  If
you've written data directly into the operating system space... you just
haven't been programming in C very long :-)  The developers probably don't
program in Smalltalk, the app wasn't written in Smalltalk and they weren't
around when the decision to write it in C was made.  Everybody has a
rational for their decision and sometimes it's paying the rent.

Thanks for your reply,
Tom

Tom,

> Hi Bill:  Stacks and queues work the same in all languages or I'll suggest
> that they aren't stacks and queues.  If a stack class doesn't have push and
> pop methods or something corresponding to them I'd be shocked. :-)  Ah... a
> quick check of GNU ST reveals there is no stack or queue class.  And a FAQ
> suggests using an OrderedCollection.  Now the question is did Dolphin add
> these constructs?

Dolphin has shared queues that are thread-safe.  Otherwise, one simply
does not need to bother having specific classes that provide almost no
additional functionality compared to the existing collections.  Learn
Smalltalk, and you will find yourself saying things like that, and you
will mean them.


> In any case I'm not wondering about a queue... seriously I just need to see
> what there is to work with.

Smalltalk's dynamic typing and use of blocks of code allow things to do
far more than you might envision.  You really have to dive in in order
to get your brain around it.


>>MVP starts out a little confusing, but after a while, you will begin to
>>wonder why it was so difficult.  I keep hoping we'll get better at
>>reducing the time for that to happen.  Trust me that it does happen.
>
>
> Not a problem.  I'm not trying to sell myself on the concept.  Any
> implementation has wiggle room and I'm interested in seeing what is being
> handled "out-of-the-box".

If you are new to Smalltalk, you might not believe that it can/does
work.  I wish to re-recommend Ted's book.



> I'm a consultant and as such I always keep my options open.  ST isn't
> something I just heard of, I bought my copy of the Byte Magazine "Smalltalk
> issue" when it originally came out.  I've never written anything using it
> but I had one of the earlier free versions of Dolphin installed a long time
> ago.

It sounds as though you are long overdue for a venture into Smalltalk.
However, please understand that learning it will be different than
learning other languages.  Everything is very circular; you need to
understand almost everything in order to understand anything.  However,
there is arguably much less to understand - once you understand that,
you have arrived :)

One of the most important things about learning Smalltalk is learning
how to find what you need in the image.  That gives you access to large
numbers of examples.  Along the way, you will build a personal style,
and some tools and projects of your own - then you start looking for
examples and starting points in them.  Try it.  After a while, your
competition won't know what hit them.

Other tools to consider: Ian Bartholomew has long kept archives of
"this" newsgroup (it has changed form over time).  I threw together a
search engine for it; it ran but was terribly slow.  He cleaned it up,
and the result is DSDN.  Between it, the image, and this group, you will
find a lot of help.


Point taken, but trust me, there is more to it.  Here's hoping you stick
around long enough to know what it is.

Have a good one,

Bill


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

"Bill Schwab" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:ckmknm$q9m$[hidden email]...

> Dolphin has shared queues that are thread-safe.  Otherwise, one simply
> does not need to bother having specific classes that provide almost no
> additional functionality compared to the existing collections.  Learn
> Smalltalk, and you will find yourself saying things like that, and you
> will mean them.

That is the reason I wanted to see the docs.  There appears to be some
differences in the implementations.

> Smalltalk's dynamic typing and use of blocks of code allow things to do
> far more than you might envision.  You really have to dive in in order to
> get your brain around it.

No doubt but Smalltalk isn't the only typeless language as you know.  I used
to work with Clipper which is both typeless and supports code blocks.
Interestingly BCPL (the precursor to B and ultimately of the C language) was
(and still is) typeless and supports anonymous procedures.

You have to take a breath once in awhile... we're not all heathens.