truly basic terminal emulation

Hi,

For fun I'm "porting" my UMIX UM implementation I wrote in C for ICFP 2006 to Pharo. For the sake of this, I need a really, really basic terminal emulator, honestly just a window showing text in a fixed-width font that I can read from and write to. Bonus if I can't move the cursor around and delete outputted text, but not necessary.

CommandShell looks like overkill for what I need. I'd rather build something basic from scratch to learn more about Morphic. I'd appreciate any direction you could share with me.

Thanks,

—
Daniel Lyons

Hi daniel

I know that camillo and toon did a full repl command line editor
So have a look at Coral packages.

Stef

On Apr 21, 2012, at 8:48 AM, Daniel Lyons wrote:

Hi Stef,

On Apr 21, 2012, at 1:34 AM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:

> I know that camillo and toon did a full repl command line editor
> So have a look at Coral packages.


Very cool stuff, thanks. I think this is the inverse of what I need though. :) I just need a basic in-Pharo console-like-thing, not a way to run Pharo code from the regular console. Am I misunderstanding Coral?

Thanks,

—
Daniel Lyons

On Apr 21, 2012, at 9:57 AM, Daniel Lyons wrote:

> Hi Stef,
>
> On Apr 21, 2012, at 1:34 AM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:
>
>> I know that camillo and toon did a full repl command line editor
>> So have a look at Coral packages.
>
>
> Very cool stuff, thanks. I think this is the inverse of what I need though. :) I just need a basic in-Pharo console-like-thing, not a way to run Pharo code from the regular console. Am I misunderstanding Coral?

Ahhhh
have a look at transcripter :)
because you will get an simple repl
Why a workspace is not enough for you :)
>
> Thanks,
>
> —
> Daniel Lyons
>
>

On Apr 21, 2012, at 2:17 AM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:
> Ahhhh
> have a look at transcripter :)
> because you will get an simple repl
> Why a workspace is not enough for you :)

They might be! Sorry if I'm being dense. :)

I hate to ask for this much hand-holding, but I'm just not seeing how it's done. Supposing I have an object with a #writeCharacter:aChar and #readCharacter selectors that read and write a character to/from the device respectively, what do I need to do to hook that object up to a Transcripter or a Workspace? And how can I force the font to be fixed-width?

Thanks again,

—
Daniel Lyons

runnnig it from real stdin / stdout won't help you?
Cause that's what I did with my readline implementation:

- open an image from the command-line
- run a readline instance in the image using FileStream stdout as output
- test my implementation with the image and the real terminal side-by-side

On 2012-04-21, at 10:34, Daniel Lyons wrote:

On Apr 21, 2012, at 5:34 AM, Camillo Bruni wrote:

> runnnig it from real stdin / stdout won't help you?
> Cause that's what I did with my readline implementation:
>
> - open an image from the command-line
> - run a readline instance in the image using FileStream stdout as output
> - test my implementation with the image and the real terminal side-by-side

I suppose I could, but I was hoping to have it working inside Smalltalk. Also for didactic purposes. I intend to write something to visualize the registers in the CPU next. Is it the fixed-width font that's making it difficult to do from a UI inside Pharo? I could certainly compromise on that.

—
Daniel Lyons

On 2012-04-21, at 18:51, Daniel Lyons wrote:

well you could also plug my readline implementation to any text morph and
set the a monospace font as default for code :) (that's what I have anyway).

Manually creating a text morph an changing it's font to some fixed-width
version is not that hard. And then depending on your needs you would simply
edit / change the underlying text (in this case with even my readline implementation)...

Check my implementation at: http://ss3.gemstone.com/ss/readline.html

On Apr 21, 2012, at 1:19 PM, Camillo Bruni wrote:
> well you could also plug my readline implementation to any text morph and
> set the a monospace font as default for code :) (that's what I have anyway).
>
> Manually creating a text morph an changing it's font to some fixed-width
> version is not that hard. And then depending on your needs you would simply
> edit / change the underlying text (in this case with even my readline implementation)...

I believe you but I seem to need a bit more explicit hand-holding. For example, when I create a new text morph, it winds up on the screen by itself with no enclosing window. Using the code derived from the TextMorph class comment:

font := TextFontReference toFont: (StrikeFont familyName: 'Pragmata Pro' size: 16).
tMorph := TextMorph new.
t1 := 'This is fixed-width' asText addAttribute: font.
tMorph contents: t1.
tMorph openInHand.

It doesn't seem to recognize Pragmata Pro or any other font name I put in, I always get the default font I set in my preferences (which is a system font and works fine). I see there's a FixedFaceFont class, but it looks like a completely different sort of thing.

I also don't see how to get started with your Readline implementation. I'm sure I'd like to use it eventually but I want to get something basic working that I can understand first.

Thanks again,

—
Daniel Lyons

On 2012-04-22, at 17:53, Daniel Lyons wrote:

indeed maybe a workspace will do just fine then :), sadly I'm not that much into morphic hence my partial approach here (that's why I personally find it far easier to directly use the terminal)...

- check that you have freetype enabled in your settings (otherwise system fonts won't be recognized)
- as a pragmatic solution I'd change the coding font globally to fixed-width (default in my images since I cannot program in a non mono-spaced font :P)

"open a new workspace "
ws := Workspace openContents: 'Initial Contents'
" update the contents of the workspace"
ws contents: 'new Contents'


> I also don't see how to get started with your Readline implementation. I'm sure I'd like to use it eventually but I want to get something basic working that I can understand first.

for the readline stuff check the test (that's generally the best place to see how code works ;)
see class: RLReadlineTest

a small example is given in RLReadline >> #readlineExample

the basic principle is that you move around a cursor and put characters / strings there:

RLReadline >> #write:
RLReadline >> #writeAll:

I know the readline implementation is quite complex for what it does, but you shouldn't bother too much and simply rely on the public interface and the example use-cases provided by the tests.



best
cami

Cami,

On Apr 22, 2012, at 1:32 PM, Camillo Bruni wrote:

>> It doesn't seem to recognize Pragmata Pro or any other font name I put in, I always get the default font I set in my preferences (which is a system font and works fine). I see there's a FixedFaceFont class, but it looks like a completely different sort of thing.
>
> indeed maybe a workspace will do just fine then :), sadly I'm not that much into morphic hence my partial approach here (that's why I personally find it far easier to directly use the terminal)...

Yes, it probably would be, but I think the Smalltalk environment contains great power, I just need to learn enough to harness it, and that means baby steps.

> - check that you have freetype enabled in your settings (otherwise system fonts won't be recognized)

It is, and it works great, I'm using a system font everywhere else. I take it the invocation I used was not incorrect then?

> - as a pragmatic solution I'd change the coding font globally to fixed-width (default in my images since I cannot program in a non mono-spaced font :P)

I can live with that for a while.

> "open a new workspace "
> ws := Workspace openContents: 'Initial Contents'
> " update the contents of the workspace"
> ws contents: 'new Contents'

OK, I can do that for writing, but for reading, I will need the read message to block until I type a character. Is there a way to do that with the workspace?


Thanks, I'll dig through that later tonight.

—
Daniel Lyons

On Apr 22, 2012, at 9:53 AM, Daniel Lyons wrote:

> font := TextFontReference toFont: (StrikeFont familyName: 'Pragmata Pro' size: 16).

OK, this works if I use LogicalFont instead:

textArea := TextMorph new contents:
        ('This is a test' asText
                addAttribute: (TextFontReference
                        toFont: (LogicalFont
                                familyName: 'Consolas'
                                pointSize: 14)))

I bet there is a more abstract way of locating a font than using one of these two classes.

—
Daniel Lyons

On 2012-04-22, at 22:00, Daniel Lyons wrote:

> Cami,
>
> On Apr 22, 2012, at 1:32 PM, Camillo Bruni wrote:
>
>>> It doesn't seem to recognize Pragmata Pro or any other font name I put in, I always get the default font I set in my preferences (which is a system font and works fine). I see there's a FixedFaceFont class, but it looks like a completely different sort of thing.
>>
>> indeed maybe a workspace will do just fine then :), sadly I'm not that much into morphic hence my partial approach here (that's why I personally find it far easier to directly use the terminal)...
>
> Yes, it probably would be, but I think the Smalltalk environment contains great power, I just need to learn enough to harness it, and that means baby steps.

well smalltalk spent too much time in the image, it kind of blinds you after some years :). plus by using the terminal you don't leave the environment at all, since you still control everything from within the image.

I guess there is a nicer way to plug things together, but I'd say keep an external text / String / readline and update the contents of the workspace each time they changed...

I suggest you read the corresponding chapters in http://pharobyexample.org/ that should help you with most of the UI questions

Next problem, the TextMorph is always the size of the initial
string. It will grow vertically as lines are added, but I don't see
how to make it resize to fit the frame. Any clues?

window := StandardWindow labelled: 'Text test'.

text := (TextMorph new contents: 'Hello, world!' asText).
text fillStyle: (Color white).
window
       addMorph: text
       frame: (0@0 corner: 1@1).

window openInWorld.

Thanks again,

--
Daniel Lyons