Smalltalk - [VW] A New Class Recommendation For Console Applications

Author

[VW] A New Class Recommendation For Console Applications

Conrad

2004-04-02, 3:33 pm

Hi, are there any plans to develop an API for reading and writing to
standard output and input respectively? For example, a class called
Console. At this time, I'm not sure if such a class exists but
Console would convey what you're
doing similar to the class Transcript. In short, the Console class
should support the following:

o reading and writing of primitive class types
o writing of formatted primitive class types
o reading and writing of user defined class types
o writing of formatted user defined class types

I'm not an expert of Smalltalk but I feel that this class is needed to
simplify the development of console applications. At this time, it
seems that I need a
GUI or input dialog to retrieve input from the user. Also, it seems
that I can
only send output to the Transcript window. This is the case within MS
Windows OS and it may be different within a Unix environment.
However, there needs to be a generic class, Console, or similar class
that works in all environments that support VW Smalltalk. Well, I
must go and I look forward to comments from the members
comp.lang.smalltalk.

Thanks in advance,

-Conrad

Eliot Miranda

2004-04-02, 4:35 pm

Xref: kermit comp.lang.smalltalk:75178

Yes. Its planned to be released in November.

Conrad wrote:

> Hi, are there any plans to develop an API for reading and writing to
> standard output and input respectively? For example, a class called
> Console. At this time, I'm not sure if such a class exists but
> Console would convey what you're
> doing similar to the class Transcript. In short, the Console class
> should support the following:
>
> o reading and writing of primitive class types
> o writing of formatted primitive class types
> o reading and writing of user defined class types
> o writing of formatted user defined class types
>
> I'm not an expert of Smalltalk but I feel that this class is needed to
> simplify the development of console applications. At this time, it
> seems that I need a
> GUI or input dialog to retrieve input from the user. Also, it seems
> that I can
> only send output to the Transcript window. This is the case within MS
> Windows OS and it may be different within a Unix environment.
> However, there needs to be a generic class, Console, or similar class
> that works in all environments that support VW Smalltalk. Well, I
> must go and I look forward to comments from the members
> comp.lang.smalltalk.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> -Conrad

--
_______________,,,^..^,,,____________________________
Eliot Miranda Smalltalk - Scene not herd

Thomas Gagné

2004-04-03, 10:36 am

In the meantime, you can play around with
<http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/articles/commandline/>. I created
classes to do just this. The only thing I haven't figured out is how to
get Windows' stdin. Nothing seems to be working. It works great on
Unix systems, though.

There are two main classes: EfiStdIO which has a singleton instance with
streams for stdin, out, and err. There is also EfiMain, a class that
knows how to save itself headless, read command line arguments, and
start programs with #argv:--very much like a C program. It includes an
interactive command-line Smalltalk utility and other fun features.

Cincom hasn't disclosed any of their proposals to me for November's
release so I can't comment on how compatible any of this stuff will be.
If they've figured out how to get Windows' stdin I'd love to find it out
so I can include it.

Conrad wrote:

>Hi, are there any plans to develop an API for reading and writing to
>standard output and input respectively?
>
>

--
..tom
remove email address' dashes for replies
opensource middleware at <http://isectd.sourceforge.net>
<http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/>

Conrad

2004-04-06, 6:34 pm

Hey Eliot, is this feature currently in Beta or similar area of
testing. If so, I would be very interested in playing with it. I had
to switch to Java for my
homeworks because I never got this issue resolved. However, I have 6
- 8 more assignments from now to the end of the term and I would like
to use VW for them.
If someone can assist, please drop me an e-mail.

Thanks in advance,

-Conrad

Eliot Miranda <eliotm@pacbell.net> wrote in message news:<xvkbc.31638$vw3.5330@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com>...[color=darkred]
> Yes. Its planned to be released in November.
>
> Conrad wrote:
>

Conrad

2004-04-06, 6:34 pm

Hi Thomas, thanks for responding to my post. I have tried your
framework and it works well for writing to standard output but I
cannot read from stardard input on Windows. Thus, the reason for my
post is to see if Cincom has a resolution to this issue on the Windows
platform because I would like to motivate my professor in adding
Smalltalk to the list of languages for the WebServices and XML. At
this time, one can use C#, C++, and Java. However, I got the go ahead
from him to use Smalltalk but I cannot because of the above issue on
the Windows
platform and also the inability to easily generate executable files
for deploy-
ment. Hey, I'm doing my best to promote Snmalltalk at the college
level but I
need some assistance to do that.

-Conrad

Thomas Gagné <tgagne@wide-open-west.com> wrote in message news:<L7idnU5JTu2qUfPd4p2dnA@wideopenwest.com>...[color=darkred]
> In the meantime, you can play around with
> <http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/articles/commandline/>. I created
> classes to do just this. The only thing I haven't figured out is how to
> get Windows' stdin. Nothing seems to be working. It works great on
> Unix systems, though.
>
> There are two main classes: EfiStdIO which has a singleton instance with
> streams for stdin, out, and err. There is also EfiMain, a class that
> knows how to save itself headless, read command line arguments, and
> start programs with #argv:--very much like a C program. It includes an
> interactive command-line Smalltalk utility and other fun features.
>
> Cincom hasn't disclosed any of their proposals to me for November's
> release so I can't comment on how compatible any of this stuff will be.
> If they've figured out how to get Windows' stdin I'd love to find it out
> so I can include it.
>
> Conrad wrote:
>

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