Germán Arduino

Smalltalks 2009

2009-11-10T16:00:00.001-03:00

We will be sponsoring Smalltalks 2009, an important conference about the Smalltalk technology in different areas of application.

The conference will have two sections:
* Scientific Research
* Software industry

and will count with distinguished guests as Dan Ingalls, Stephane Ducasse, Alex Warth, Tim Mackinnon and James Foster.

Also, and modestly, I will be giving a talk (together with Alejandro Aguirre) about SWT (Smalltalk Web Toolkit), the technology we used to develop several projects, for example: Ceibo.

If you are interested in smarter ways to develop software shouldn't miss this event!

New Toy: Balsamiq Mockups

2009-09-10T19:53:00.004-03:00

Some days ago I need to bid a project on a freelancers site.

After I bid my first proposal, I was selected by the customer to make a more complete proposal. Then he send me a complete description of the project he need to develop.

Such description was a bit complex and with the idiomatic barrier the things got a bit more complex.

Then, thinking in a way of show him my ideas with no place to doubts, Balsamiq Mockups came to my mind by first time to this sort of use (Not to design a real project, else to build a proposal).

Not being myself an expert on Balsamiq, else only a novice (I used it only one time before and for a few minutes) I clicked on the Balsamiq icon and, as usual on me, I started using without read nothing and trusting on the easy of adaptation of the product. And yes, it worked!.

In a few minutes I designed two mockups with not problems and showing exactly the things I wanted to show to the possible customer. I know the customer liked this way of show an early desing of the system because "A picture is worth a thousand words".

I can suspect that Balsamiq will be with me from now on for many tasks in my company.

buscar

Retrobjects won!

2009-09-04T20:52:00.011-03:00

The Retrobjects projects won the Innovation Technology Awards on ESUG 2009!

The main positions were:

1st: Retrobjects by Gabriel Eduardo Honoré
2nd: PhidgetLab by L. Kessler, S. Platz, T. Klingbeil, F. Schlegel, Ph. Tessenow, M. Haupt, M. Perscheid, R. Hirschfeld
3rd: For the first time, we got a tie. ESUG board decide to give two 3rd prizes (and not splitting the prize)
- SqueakNOS by V. Murgia, L. Notarfrancesco, L. Caniglia, G. Richarte
- Glamour by Ph. Bunge, T. Gîrba, L. Renggli, J. Ressia, D. Röthlisberger

The 1st and 3rd projects are from Argentina and on the 2nd also works an argentinian Smalltalker.

Congratulations to all the winners and also to all the participants!

Check the complete list of winners and nominations.

ESUG 2009 Innovation Technology Awards

2009-08-01T15:25:00.004-03:00

The ESUG board announced that the 2009 ESUG conference will be held at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale(UBO) in Brest, France, August 31 - September 4, 2009; Camp Smalltalk 29-30 august 2009 and in the same event, the 6th Innovation Technology Awards.

Developers of any Smalltalk-based software are invited to compete. You can findout more on the previous editions and competitors on the page dedicated to the history of the ESUG Innovation Technology Awards.

The nominations to the 6th event are in this page and this year will be 5 argentinian projects between 21 nominations:

Best of lucks to you all!

In the spirit of original Squeak

2009-05-21T20:21:00.005-03:00

When I started with Squeak, sooner I meet Diego Gómez Deck, who introduced me on the original ideas of Alan Kay and other people who started Squeak project.

In our days, seems that Squeak has evolved to several different audiences, with an important focus on web development. And, being a Smalltalk, is very good for such target, as to almost any sort of software development.

Even though, part of the original spirit of Squeak was to be a tool to help childrens learn anything on the school. A tool to help teachers to develop new ways of teach, making possible new ways of learn.

Such spirit is alive on our days on Squeakland, were several of the original people from Squeak team continue working.

The Squeakland site is plenty of fresh resources to such sort of Squeak use. Enjoy it!

ClubSmalltalk and PasswordsPro Promotion

2009-05-11T09:01:00.003-03:00

We are delighted to announce our agreement with ClubSmalltalk to sell our product PasswordsPro at a promotional price of usd 15 (Instead of the regular price of usd 29).

This agreement is focused in help this Smalltalk organization and, of course, get some new customers to our product.

Read the complete article here.

Nuevo foro para bloggers

2009-04-12T12:22:00.002-03:00

Fue lanzado recientemente, se llama Conexión Blogger y es un espacio destinado al intercambio entre bloggers en idioma español.

Some experimental video tutorials about PasswordsPro

2009-03-29T16:17:00.003-03:00

I recorded two experimental tutorials about how to use PasswordsPro.

They are:

http://www.passwordspro.com/videos/ppro1.htm (No sound. Show how to create a new PasswordsPro file).

http://www.passwordspro.com/videos/ppro3.htm (Bad sound, but until we have a better one, hope this help to new users of PasswordsPro. Show how to edit a PasswordsPro file).

Free PasswordsPro licenses!

2009-03-08T11:35:00.005-02:00

As some of the readers of this blog may know, we are launching on this month of March our product PasswordsPro.

As a way of get more exposure we are offering free licenses for bloggers who want to review PasswordsPro.

I you are interested only contact me!

Dolphin Smalltalk Video Tutorials

2009-02-28T09:55:00.005-02:00

After a mail on comp.lang.smalltalk.dolphin asking about the development of an air traffic control radar display simulation, Andy Bower (one of the makers of Dolphin Smalltalk) responded that was working on some screencasts about creation of simulations on Dolphin.

The screencasts are ready now, and you can watch them at:

Part 1: Programming Animation in Dolphin Smalltalk

Part 2: Programming Animation in Dolphin Smalltal k

The only suggestion to Andy could be to speak a bit more slowly (at least to not fluent English speakers as me).

Thanks Andy by the tutorials!

An important poll to my business

2009-02-15T11:49:00.004-02:00

Some time ago on OISV forum I was remarked that the name of my company sound very bad (as a bad word) on English because the pronunciation.

When I selected such name I was searching a name that sound aproximately the same on English and Spanish (my native language), and a bit short, to make easy the people remember it. Then ArSol comes to my mind as an acronym of my last name and the word "solutions".

I used it a lot of years, invested a lot of time and money on it, but wihtout being aware about this bad meaning on English. Now I'm relly worried by the need of change the name to stay on business (The global market to any MicroISV talk English) .

Some persons of BoS forum and OISV forum tell me that I must change the name to have opportunity on the English market (were I already worked and sold software and services even with such name) and other persons (mainly from other countries of Europe) tell me that is a good name, that don't sound bad to they.

Then, guess what? I thinked on a poll to ask about this important (to me) topic, and is here (Thanks by your vote!):

Online Surveys & Market Research

MicroISV and Smalltalk - Part I

2009-02-06T17:34:00.005-02:00

Surely I will not write here anything new, but I hope help others MicroISV developers to discover the power of Smalltalk.

This first post about this topic will be short, trying not bore you, and is only to comment that when published that famous Byte Magazine August 81 about Smalltalk, a "must read" article was inside: "Design Principles Behind Smalltalk".

May be I will talk more about this later, but want to focus now on a principle very important to MicroISV developers:

Personal Mastery: If a system is to serve the creative spirit, it must be entirely comprehensible to a single individual.

Exactly to MicroISV, don't think?

To end, I want to point an interesting introductory article about Dolphin Smalltalk published by Bitwise Magazine in August 2005, press here to read it.

More articles about Smalltalk on this same magazine.

The image of this article was taken from Bitwise Magazine with permit of the editor.

Second Poll about MicroISV profitability

2009-02-01T19:03:00.003-02:00

First of all, let me thanks all the voters of my previous poll!.

Even lot of people think that the future (and present ) of the most apps is the web format, surfing MicroISV sites, is possible to see lots of desktop apps.

Not all apps are suitables to be on web format, right, but I'm talking of such apps that could be presented even as web or desktop app.

I know that the question may sound so general, but I want to ask opinions from the point of view of potential of sales, development costs, future possibilities and with the goal of reach the broader possible customer base.

Feel free to send me your comments besides the vote,

Online Surveys & Market Research

New hosting plans and prices!

2009-01-31T12:44:00.003-02:00

Is online the new site (also in English) of ArSol Web Hosting. Includes new prices and services, check it and ask us by any question!

Software Profitability to a Micro-ISV

2009-01-27T17:40:00.008-02:00

As entrepreneur of software industry I would like to collect some opinions about different questions related with the business of a Micro-ISV. In such sense I've the idea of publish some polls to know the opinion of other people, mainly people related with the IT industry with some experience on these topics.

Let me start with a simple poll to identify what sort of software is worth to develop, selecting only between two options.

Thanks in advance by your participation!

Online Surveys & Market Research

VisualWorks Box!

2009-01-22T19:46:00.009-02:00

Some days ago, when I downloaded the NC version of VisualWorks, I found also this page, with the possibility of request a CD of VWNC to Cincom. Then, I completed the form and forgot the question.

Today, very very few days after such request, I received on my home, on Sunchales, Argentina a box containing a software box, coming from Cincinnati!.

And, as in old (good) times, when the software comes from the producers inside nice boxes with manuals. (Even my own modest products of past times (Biochemical Laboratories, ERP, etc) were boxed with printed manuals!.

In this case the box have the VisualWorks CD and the O bjectStudio CD (non commercial) versions. Also, one nice datasheet to each product.

If anyone from Cincom is reading this post I would know if the commercial versions comes with printed manuals, just by curiosity.

May be some day, if business permit, I could buy the commercial version.

By now I'm very impressed, as I told on my previous post, and I continue learning on my free time (Currently about toolbars, menus and other things of UI building).

My current goal is port my Aida/Scribo Console to VisualWorks under the MIT license.

Thanks Cincom by sending me the package of NC version!

VisualWorks first steps

2009-01-13T22:00:00.013-02:00

As I've developed the Scribo-Console, and taking in account that Aida/Web is available on several different Smalltalk's I will try to make the same with the console. An excellent excuse to explore others Smalltalk’s!.

Then, the list of possible ports of Scribo-Console is the following: VisualWorks - Smalltalk/X - Gemstone - ObjectStudio - Dolphin.

I'm not sure if will make all, but at least will try with the Smalltalk’s that run on Linux. Not sure with the others, because I don’t like to work on Windows.

To start I selected VisualWorks, because I give it a try on the past, version 5 if not bad remember, and willing to try it again, being that is from Aida/Web comes.

I started installing VWNC on my Xubuntu desktop and, after a few adjustments, is running ok.

Such adjustments were two:

1. After burn the ISO image on the CD, I needed to copy all the CD contents on the hard disk to make work the installation. Don’t tried much things, simply copied and installed and it worked.

2. The startup script, named VisualNC need to be bash, not csh, then I replaced the first sentence (#!/bin/csh) with this one: #!/bin/bash.

And VWNC started smoothly.

First thing I noticed was the fonts a bit smaller to my current resolution, then I switched to the biggest (from Settings VW itself). And also I set the look and feel to Mac (Is the only way of have one of these here!).

Two things caught my attention: the amazing speed to load, open windows, saving, etc and the superb documentation of VW. I think that any product that play on the major leagues must have complete documentation, and VW have it.

After starting VWNC by first time I saved my own image to not broke the original, and then installed the parcel of Aida/Web. Also I searched something to have the code colored and found RBCodeHighlighting on Environment Enhancements category of Parcel Manager.

Having now a comfortable environment to work in, I started the port. As is a tiny app, on the Squeak version I did the UI on the same main class, with Morphic. Then the challenge here is learn a bit about the UI Painter (When I first tried VW, some years ago, I completed the Walk Through, and now I plan to base the work reading again this doc).

Porting some methods, an important thing I noticed, being that I comes from Squeak with no namespaces in mind, is the need of put the namespace name before the class name, as in the attached image: Swazoo.SwazooServer singleton sites (Thanks Janko by point it).

Well, is time to go back to real work, and wait having a bit of free time to continue playing with VW and the console port!

PasswordsPro is ready to download (and buy)!

2008-12-05T17:09:00.006-02:00

After the presentation of ClavesPC on ESUG 2008 I received some suggestions to release the same product but on English language.

Being that the product isn't anymore of my property because I sold it to the company Solo10 we talked and agreed to make an English version with the name PasswordsPro.

As usual, I did the product development work and Solo10 the graphics, site and commercial and marketing tasks.

As I started the development (when I first developed the Spanish version) with the multilingual option in mind, wasn't a big effort having the two versions living on the same sources and compile each one with a few settings.

The same to the installer, developed with NSIS and HM NIS Edit.

And, after some days of work, PasswordsPro is here, ready to help protect your private data! Check the screenshots page.

And, if you are a smalltalker, be prepared to the offer we are working on. Soon more info, so stay tunned!

Aida/Scribo Console

2008-12-03T14:24:00.010-02:00

In the way of make Aida/Scribo a bit more user friendly to a non smalltalker user, Janko asked on the Aida list by the development of a little operation console.

I taken the job and developed a Morphic console to operate the basic aspects detaileds on Janko's mail.

The current version of the console permits:

Start the whole Swazoo Web Server
Stop the whole Swazoo Web Server
Start/Stop individual Aida/Scribo sites

To have the console working on your image, you can download it from its repository and make the following changes on SwazooServer class:

Add the instance method #isServing (under the category testing) with the following content:

^self servers notEmpty

Add the instance method #watchdogOther empty (on the category private-watchdog)

The console has two different interfaces (another way to show the power of Smalltalk) as you can see on the following pics:

To show it, evaluates: ScriboConsole basicView.

To show it, evaluates:
ScriboConsole fullView.

Enjoy it!

More tips to get graphics inside the image

2008-11-30T10:43:00.004-02:00

Some time ago I already talked about this topic. But what happens when the graphics is a bit big and the usual #printString, #fullPrintString, #longPrintString only show the first 5000 chars and ends with "etc..."

We talked about this topic with Jecel on the Squeak IRC and also with Nico Petton, who suggested this way to avoid the "etc..."

The trick is having the string on a text file, and then copy from them. The code that make the job is the following:

How to install latest (development) versions of Aida, Scribo and friends.

2008-11-14T19:43:00.003-02:00

Being that we (the developers) usually wants to work with the latest version of the tools we use I wrote a small Installer script to install all the needed components.

The script use Installer, then it should be run (evaluated on a workspace) after having installed a working version of Installer.

To install Installer you can download it from here: http://installer.pbwiki.com/f/Installer.st

The script is:

Transcript open.
Installer installUrl: 'http://mc.bioskop.fr/Sport/Sport-mu.2.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/OSProcess/OSProcess-dtl.45.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://mc.bioskop.fr/Swazoo/Swazoo-np.11.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://mc.bioskop.fr/Aida/Aida5.6-janko.112.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://scribo.aidaweb.si/repository/scribo-np.176.mcz'.
Installer installUrl:
'http://scribo.bioskop.fr/repository/scriboshout-np.1.mcz'.
Installer installUrl:
'http://scribo.aidaweb.si/repository/scribopersistence-np.21.mcz'.
Installer installUrl:
'http://scribo.aidaweb.si/repository/scriboplugins-janko.12.mcz'.
Installer installUrl:
'http://scribo.aidaweb.si/repository/scribo-console-gsa.5.mcz'.
"Seems not work from FTP, install at hand"
"Installer installUrl: 'ftp://swikis.ddo.jp/SIXX/squeak/SIXX20071110.sar'."
Installer installUrl: 'http://squeaksource.blueplane.jp/FileMan/FileMan-mu.117.mcz'.

After the installation, you can put your Scribo to run, as follow:

SwazooAida demoStart.

(AIDASite named: 'aidademo') styleClass: #ScriboStyle; blog; wiki.

ScriboConsole new openAViewOnMe.

I tried this script succesfully on a stock Squeak 3.10.2 #7179 image. Of course, you should update the packages versions when they changes. Anyway, the script is here also.

Another useful script (to my style of work at least), to customize the stock image with
some development tools is the next:

Transcript open.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/Installer/Installer-Core-mtf.250.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/shout/Shout.3.15-tween.72.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/shout/ShoutMonticello.1-tween.2.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/RoelTyper/RoelTyper-rw.60.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/eCompletion/ECompletion-danieroux.92.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/AST/AST-lr.160.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/RefactoringEngine/Refactoring-Core-lr.11.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.squeaksource.com/shout/ShoutWorkspace.1-tween.4.mcz'.
Installer installUrl: 'http://www.joeyhagedorn.com/media/downloads/Algernon.1.2.sar'.

It updates Installer and install some tools I usually use to develop.

Albaplata Project first screenshots

2008-11-08T12:47:00.016-02:00

As some readers of this blog may know , my company ArSol Software was hired by Igo Software to develop several multimedial units about culture and historic sites of Extremadura state on Spain.

To develop this project, I hired three squeakers from here, Argentina, and I'm really very happy with the results. The team is geographically disperse and I coordinated the work only by Internet, using mostly mail and some chat. Thanks you guys Alejandro, Javier and Francisco by your fantastic work!.

IGO Software provided the graphical, video and audio resources and we built the units (one Squeak application by unit) using the framework FMA, originally developed by Diego Gómez Deck.

Each unit will be available on 3 languages (Spanish, English and Portuguese) and will run on touch screens on different places of the Extremadura state. The target users are the tourists that want to have a quick trip by the historical sites, before doing the real trip.

All this project is yet in development phase, but we want to share thiese first screens of some of the units, until the moment that the Consejería de Cultura de la Junta de Extremadura release the complete applications.

The topics covered by the project are (with the names on spanish, to avoid translations errors):

Centro de Interpretación del Ferrocarril en Extremadura
Centro de Interpretación de la Ciudad Medieval de Plasencia
Centro de Interpretación del Campamento Romano de Cáceres el Viejo
Centro de Interpretación de la minería en Extremadura
Centro de Interpretación del Circo Romano
Centro de Interpretación de los Conjuntos Históricos en Extremadura
Centro de Interpretación del Pintor Zurbarán

These units show different sort of games, as trivia and puzzles, that the user must follow, learning lot of details of each topic. A voice help is available on any topic, to help responding.

As usual on the Extremadura projects, all the software is open sourced and is available to download from Squeaksource, under the name Albaplata project.

How to change the Aida/Web banner

2008-09-11T22:17:00.009-03:00

I'm in the way of use and learn Aida/Web and Scribo and I'm starting using Scribo as wiki.

In this way I need to learn a lot of things, and I will post here some small "how to's" of things that may be useful to other people in the same way as me.

After install all the needed packages in a Squeak image, and having Scribo running, the first thing may be desirable may be to change the Aida banner for an own one.

Then, you need to "save as" such banner and generate a new image of the same size that which you saved, decorate it with your own graphics and then do the following:

1. Evaluate in a workspace on your Aida image:

WebStyle new importImage: 'aidabannergif' from: 'aidabannergif.gif'.

were aidabanner.gif is the name of the graphics file on your image directory and #aidabannergif the name of the method to be created on the WebStyle class under the category imgs.

2. Replace the content of the method #aidaBannerGif of class DefaultWebStyle with the content of the recent created in the step 1 and it's all.

To end, you should delete the method #aidabannergif on class WebStyle to maintain your image as clean as possible.

Of course, this is the quick and dirty method to have things as fast as possible, but the correct way should be create your own webstyle. Surely I will talk about this topic sooner or later.

Smalltalk/X site revamped

2008-09-05T17:58:00.009-03:00

Yesterday, after a comment from Janko Mivšek (the author of Aida/Web), about a new port of his product, this time to Smalltalk/X I felt the need of visit the Exept Software AG site, that don't visited from a long time.

Was great to check that the site was completely revamped and a new version of Smalltalk/X is available.

I downloaded and installed the Linux version (see the attached pic) and it runs ok on my Xubuntu box.

After the installaton, I checked the documentation, in parts I knew from the past were incompletes and another great new! They are now completed and extended!. (At least those docs I knew from previous versions).

I already invested some time in the past in Smalltalk/X, were we used to have a wiki on the now defunct swiki.net and even a mail list, were Claus Gittinger posted sometimes.

Again, I want to give a try to ST/X, hope I will have time soon.

11 entre 20, no está mal!

2008-08-29T21:13:00.012-03:00

ESUG 2008 finalizó y ClavesPC calificó 11 entre 20 trabajos presentados en el Innovation Technology Awards.

Esto es muy importante para nosotros, (el team de ClavesPC somos solamente dos personas, quien esto escribe como desarrollador y Daniel como el ideólogo del producto) y queremos agradecer a todos quienes nos votaron y a quienes se tomaron el trabajo de revisar el producto, pero muy especialmente va nuestro agradecimiento para una amiga, Natalia Esteban, quien desinteresadamente presentó el software y trabajó armando dicha presentación y fue la mayor artífice para esos votos que conseguimos. Natalia, mil gracias por la ayuda.

Por otra parte, también queremos agradecer a Hernán, quién nos contactó con Natalia, sabiendo que ella viajaba a Amsterdam, ante un pedido mío por ayuda para esta presentación ya que para nosotros es imposible un viaje de esa naturaleza.

Finalmente queremos felicitar a los productos que integraron el podio del concurso, ya que son productos realmente excelentes, así como el resto de trabajos que participaron y para nosotros es un honor y un orgullo haber podido estar ahi.

En este enlace podrán ver algunas fotos de Natalia presentando ClavesPC el 25 de Agosto en Amsterdam. Muchas Gracias también a Andrés Valloud que tomó las fotos.