In the past months, various Squeak Teams have sent their reports to the Squeak-dev mailing list.
News team: October 2006.
Webteam: October, November and December 2006.
Box-Admins team: October, November and December 2006.
SETools team: October, November and December 2006.
Documentation team: October, November, December 2006.
The News team also sent a report for January 2007.
Many Squeak packages have been released in the past months. Here’s a quick list:
John M. McIntosh and Andreas Raab have recently release new versions of the Mac Carbon and Windows VM.
John has bumped the Carbon VM version to 3.8.15b1. Previous releases of this VM have also provided a MacIntel browser plugin in lieu of the old PowerPC-only plugin and many other fixes, thanks to funding by Viewpoints Research, Inc. This latest release includes fixes for bugs discovered by the Scratch support team.
Andreas has released a new VM based on the latest VMMaker (3.9). This are experimental releases, and Andreas is inviting ther Win32 users to test it and report any problems. There aren’t any new features, but this new releases use the new build system that has been put in place between Squeak versions 3.7 and 3.9.
In the past months, the Squeak Foundation board has met via IM every fortnight in order to discuss important issues involving the Foundation and involving Squeak development.
Craig Latta has been appointed to speack for the board, and has posted the notes of each meeting:
The next board meeting will tale place on February 7th, 2007.
Daniel Vainsecher, leader of the Elections team, has announced the timeline and process for the 2007 elections of the Squeak Foundation Board:
Starting today [Sunday, 28th January], and for the next 2 weeks (until 18th February ’07), candidates for the Squeak board are invited to announce themselves on this mailing list.
[…]
In particular, when applying, candidates are encouraged to mention their background, general reasons for running, and particular plans if they get elected. Other candidates and all squeakers are invited to pose additional questions.
[…]
For 2 weeks starting from the 18th, prospective voters are asked to make sure they are registered. Remember that the basic criterion for voting is having a Squeak People account that is validated at least to the Apprentice level. This is also a good time to talk to other Squeaker communities and get them involved.
[…]
The voters list will be finalized on the 3rd of March, and the CIVS election started. The election will run for 3 days, and the results announced on March 7th, 2007.
The News Team will closely follow the whole elections process.
On the Squeakland list there is an ongoing thread about Etoys documentation and how to use it for teaching.
Guyren Howe started it by writing:
Hi,
I am volunteering at a local school, and will be doing squeakland once a week with some fifth graders.
Squeakland (etoys?) seems ideal for these kids, except that I’m frustrated by the lack of documentation.
And, among others, Alan Kay answers by pointing to the more complete Japanese and Spanish material. Very interesting for those who want to use Etoys for teaching is the long background he gives:
Etoys is all about children being able to make fun working versions of interesting ideas from scratch, and learning much more about the ideas than when force-fed with them. Considerable thought on the part of the children’s mentors is often required to set up a curriculum that is a nice balance between the way children think and do, the ideas, and what is most natural to do in Etoys. […]
Hilaire Fernandes points to the material available in French:
A lot of these documents are step by step tutorials to produce specific EToys project. Also most of the time the related Etoys .pr projects can be downloaded directly in your plug-in.
Many thanks to Matthias Berth for submitting this news item.
Craig Latta writes:
Hi all–
Every month I host “Squackers”, a meeting of Squeak hackers. It
happens near San Francisco, USA, on first Wednesdays from 8pm to 10pm
pacific time; the next one will be on 1 November 2006. We get together
to show what we’ve been doing and dreaming in Squeak. We also tie in
people from far away via AIM (for audio and video) and VNC (to share
screens).In November we’ll have an OOPSLA redux, I’ll show a timekeeping
system I wrote for consulting projects, and we’ll watch and discuss
other demos and topics that people have.Please let me know if you can make it (either in person or
virtually), if you need directions, and if you have something you’d like
to show or discuss. My AIM ID is “[deleted]”proceed for truth! 🙂
-C
Editor’s notice: I’ve decided not to publish Craig’s AIM id. If you’re interested in attending the meeting and need to contact Craig, please follow the link to the squeak-dev archive posting.
Klaus D. Witzel sent us a report on last Saturday’s Smalltalk Party in Bern, that we are happy to publish. Thanks, Klaus!
Last Saturday two dozen Smalltalkers enjoyed a very successfull Smalltalk Party in Bern. We received presentations and life demos in VW, Dolphin and Squeak, from authors and users of
There was plenty of time between the presentations for breakout sessions during which newbies, users and authors happily hacked together and discussed new developments and burning questions.
The party culminated at the Tramdepot Brewery and Restaurant, downtown in Bern, where the Smalltalkers “almost” chilled out and enjoyed a recreating meal and tasteful drinks.
Our deep thanks go to the executive organizer Marcus Denker; to SSUG, sponsor of snacks and drinks; and to SCG, who set up this wonderful meeting and generously provided facilities.
Ned Konz explains on the Beginners mailing list how to access the serial port from Squeak.
Colin Putney has published on the SETools mailing list a roadmap for OmniBrowser.
OmniBrowser is a ground up rewrite of the classical system browsers provided in Smalltalk. It’s designed to be flexible and extensible, so as to encourage experimentation with new types of development tools, language extensions, and runtime environments.
Colin’s roadmap includes:
The Weekly Squeak 