Thanks for asking, these are good questions.
I am copying this to the general squeak-dev list for better exposure.
Replies should include the beginners list for continuity.
Dave
On 2025-12-17 02:00, [email protected] wrote:
This might not be applicable to this group, but I don't think my
message went through on the Etoys mailing group and I'm fairly certain
all support for Etoys is gone. I've looked through all the affiliated
links, most only exist on the Internet Archive, which is my evidence
for the statement.
That said, there's a ghost of Etoys in Squeak and I'm hoping my
question might have an answer here.
When running the widely available Etoys distribution for Linux (I
installed it via the Linux Mint repot), there seems to be a universal
issue regardless of the distro that I am not sure how to solve and
that's when the mouse is idle, running scripts slow down. I've tried a
few settings in preferences (I usually immediately check the 'higher
performance' box on any perception of 'wonky performance' I notice
early on when working on a project) and cannot seem to figure out what
is causing the issue.
To create this situation, simply make make a rectangle, and drop a
'turn by' and 'move by' tile into a scriptor. Set the ticker speed to
100 ticks per second and turn it on, setting the little rectangle into
an endless spin. Move the mouse and watch it. Stop moving the mouse
and notice the ticker speed loses accuracy and slows WAY down. And
it's entirely dependent on the mouse input.
Another general VM functionality bug I found...
...when going full screen, I think the VM is detecting the physical
display and not the actual resolution available to it from the OS. How
it bypasses the OS, I'm not sure, maybe an age of the software issue?
The result is that going between full screen and windowed causes
massive display errors too numerous to explain, but they range from
Etoys VM crashing to full screen extending far beyond the actual set
resolution of the computer. I've not used the Mac version but I've not
had either of these issues for Windows and I'm wondering if there's a
VM option when compiling from source (I've not been successful here,
but I can be bullheaded until something works if necessary) or, more
desireably, a VM that already runs on Linux that doesn't have these
problems.
Thanks for any input. Honestly, for me, the real thing I'd like is for
Etoys implementation in Squeak to work as it does in Etoys so the VM's
keep up with the never-stable OS landscape, but as I understand it, the
ambassador for this project is, sadly, no longer with us. I use Etoys
because I'm not a math person and programming things for serious is a
laughable ask to expect from me, and so I cling to it, despite the lack
of support.
At any rate, I don't know where to ask questions and because Etoys is
based on old squeak and it's in smalltalk, I figured with that project
in statis, this might be a logical place to ask.
Primarily, the mouse moving affecting scripts speed is far more dire to
my project than the resolution issues. They're negligable if not
solved...an inconvenience. The script timing is extremely detrimental
to my work.
I apologize if the question is beyond the scope of help in this group.
Thanks for reading.
p.s. The real solution, I suppose, is learning smalltalk, but frankly,
I've not figured out on my own how etoys translates to smalltalk
despite the script-to-text because the real syntax of smalltalk is far
more...fluid, shall we say...There's lots of similarities I've found
poking through the Etoys classes, but tracking out the bits to figure
out how the picture is made and further more constructing bits to make
a picture is not clear...anyway...just thought I'd state that I'd
RATHER use squeak, but for whatever reason, the books I have didn't
tickle my brain the correct way and Etoys is just more fun anyway... :P
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