Your point is starkly true and very sad. There is a big difference in both societies. HK is a wealthy area and fairly tech advanced, so many people have cellphones. I think the yazidis live in under served areas from a tech/internet perspective. Somehow I'm hoping that makes a difference.
my point was that the yazidis had smartphones, and there is plenty of footage. It has not become mainstream for some reason.
Heck, TODAY, the army of a nato member is slaughtering civilians in northern Syria in plain sight. There's ample footage of the killings and it is horrific (e.g. tanks marching over people, including women). It gets systematically banned from the main social sites.
As a Pharo contributor, well, there is indeed some clicking involved but not as much as you may think.
Keybindings are okayish at this point but can use some more love indeed. But this is not related to the core of Pharo but to the tooling that can be improved on some aspects (and this is moving forward actually).
If a user is not able to use a mouse, well, maybe the user can have a CI that integrates all of the code written in Tonel format and pushed to a git repo. Can work, Tonel format is pretty readable and usable from a command line.
There are ways to use Pharo as a "normal" language. But then, what's the point.
I see the new framework for keyboard shortcuts was completed. There are many shortcuts to customize in preferences now. Congrats! :)
Still, the shortcuts by default are totally different than the usual. Is it possible to make for example readline (bash) emulation with the new keyboard shortcuts code? Where would you start if you wanted to do this?
> As a Pharo contributor
I played with 7.0 yesterday, I have a few questions, maybe you'll be able to help me:
- I work on a Linux with high DPI display. I increased the font size of everything to extra large and set scaling factor, which helped, but the cursor is still tiny and almost invisible. I tried reading the code in HandMorph and Cursor, however, the beCursor method which handles displaying of hardwareCursor (I assume) is a primitive. I downloaded the opensmalltalk-vm and after a short fight with it succeeded in running its image. I found primitiveBeCursor method, but it calls C-level function called something like `ioSetCursorSomething` - and I couldn't locate that function. Do you know where it is?
- when you set scaling factor and font size, it's not universally recognized. The menu at the top of screen didn't change its font size, the lists with columns (in preferences, in debugger, etc.) have fixed column-size which truncates most entries (and splitter for changing the width of a column is barely visible), some elements start overlapping (tabs in the browser obscure the row with instance/class side, flat/hier and so on), the windows seem to have hard-coded initial extents which ignore font-size and scaling. To be honest it's barely usable right now for me, to the point that, to play with it, I had to create a dummy Xvnc display and run Pharo there, then run x11vnc on the Pharo window id and finally connect to it via VNC client, scaled the whole thing up. It's a bit nightmarish an experience :) Is there any work towards making it better in progress?
- related to the above, is it possible to set the initial extent of the Pharo window (the top-most, OS-level one, I mean) on the command-line? There's a switch for starting in iconified state or fullscreen, but I didn't find one like `size` or `geometry`.
- What are class "extensions"? Are they simply traits, or is it something new? Is it documented somewhere?
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I see lots of great progress on all fronts, but Pharo remains rough around the edges. The discoverability of the details is great, but the bigger picture - an overview of all the toolkits, for example, or a succinct description of architecture - is very hard to piece together. The new package manager interface finally displays a bit of description for each (this wasn't the case for a long time), but many packages have no description. Coupled with package names being rather hermetic this makes for a frustrating experience. I'm a rather persistent kind of guy and so I stuck with Pharo despite all that, but I imagine many other devs wouldn't care to do this, unfortunately.
Note to self (mostly): there's a SQUEAK_FAKEBIGCURSOR env var which you can set to 1 to have the VM display twice as big cursor. I've no idea why there's the 'FAKE' part, from the source it looks like it just creates a normal X11 cursor that's twice as big. This should work will Cuis, Squeak, and Pharo, as it's part of VM.
I am using Linux a ton (actually on clusters of boxes) and have a boatload of tools and languages (including low level C and in the past, assembly).
Now, I am also using Pharo to do things on Linux and it is easier and faster to get results out of it, especially when I need to fix a failure.
Pharo is not replacing the OS (even if it may feel like it).
One can deal with a running Pharo remotely (either via VNC directly into Pharo or with Pharo7, using Calypso remote connections).
I am with you on the symbolic aspect but still, having an image that one can inspect is great. I was not understanding its value when I started. Now, I do. And I also find it awesome to have a stacktrace saved to disk on a server so that I can reload it into my desktop box and see exactly where things went south, including variables, values etc. Try that with a core dump.
Now, to each its own and I have a personal little project I should actually deliver, namely being able to expose a fuse filesystem from a Pharo image, so that I can use vim and tmux and those things right from a server. There is no technical issue doing this, just damn code it.
The current Pharo is not an OS inside an OS. UnifiedFFI actually makes it easy to bind with C libraries (heck, I wrapped LibStrophe which is full of callbacks, callbacks that are actually written in Pharo, including full debugging on callbacks, see https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HTG3GB3xdwlje8wADZPj...) and the more Pharo evolves (been there since Pharo 2.0) the more it delivers on what I need.
With the new boostrapping, one can actually have images with just the bare minimum (no UI, no devtools) so that it can run.
What is also interesting for me in Pharo is that it actually stood the test of time. I am sick of new languages that pop up all the time, where one is relearning the basics with half baked libraries. Pharo core classes are solid, work well and after working in there for a while, it becomes second nature to do quite advanced stuff that one would not even dream to do in, say, Java.
Pharo is indeed a tool and in my toolbox, it is one the best ones so far. Coupled with Unix tools, it is a beast.
I not care if it is getting popular or not. What I care is that it works, that I can influence its course and change what is not pleasing me (try that with other toolchains).
And also that its community actually owns it, not a commercial organization like Oracle, Google, Microsoft...
In that regard, Pharo is pretty much aligned on Linux.
The Pharo community understands the limitations or warts of Pharo, because there are some. But the features are currently delivering a net positive.
And, a little thing that is quite important: I have fun creating and maintaining systems I have done in Pharo.
This really contrasts with other solutions where fighting with accidental complexity takes 50% of the time, if not more.
Anyway, to each its own. I can relate to being angry when engineering. Pharo is lowering the level on my WTF-o-meter, which is actually good.
Some exception cases: the phone needs to run a Mobile device management agent that installs and launches an antivirus, or the mobile happens to connect to a corporate VPN that routes all traffic and then inspects it via some appliance.
Nice to have the videos indeed!