View this PageEdit this PageAttachments to this PageHistory of this PageHomeRecent ChangesSearch the SwikiHelp Guide
Hotspots: Admin Pages | Turn-in Site |
Current Links: Case Final Project Summer 2007

Questions on Final Milestone

See Spring 2000 Project Milestones – ask questions here:


Hey, the announcements page says the deadline's been pushed back to August 21st!! That's an extra 4 months... Thanks, Guzdial! CS people DO have hearts after all...


April 21 is a Friday, and during class we're supposed to turn in a hardcopy, etc... Does this mean the project is actually due Thursday, or on Friday with the at-Mark's-door-by-4:30 deal?

Jared Ivey
I'm changing the date to April 20. Mark Guzdial


This isn't really part of the last milestone, but I was wondering how can you get squeak to ftp a file up to a server..even with just an anonymous login.
There's an example in the book, p. 240 Mark Guzdial

I am currently having problems resizing my bookmorph to fit the size of the alignment morph that contains it. Is there any way to do this?
Adam Gershowitz

You're trying to put a BookMorph inside an AlignmentMorph? Why? The problem that you're probably facing is that the size of the BookMorph is dependent on the size of the page containing it. A BookMorph can actually be many different sizes if you have different size pages in the BookMorph. Mark Guzdial

try setting the current page size of the book morph to whatever you want the size to be:

bm resizePagesTo: ( alignment extent).

i haven't tested it, but something like the above should work for you. Also, if you just set the current page size ( using width: ) then you need to call bm makeUniformPageSize to make all the pages the size size so you aren't changing sizes as you go to the next page :)
Stephen Belknap

i'm trying to create a textMorph in my alignment morph but i want to restrict its size. i don't want it to EVER get larger or smaller than
size x. how do i do that? another related problem i'm having is how to make my alignment morphs stay with my window. resizing the window seems like a hack. every time my mouse crosses over a listmorph the scroll bars pop up and shift everything over making it spill out of the window. System Browser somehow manage to avoid it but i can't for the life of me figure out how to do it and looking in that class didn't help.

Alex Salazar

Several things to explore. Have you tried switching the ListMorphs to use inboard scrollbars so that they don't pop out? You want to see class ScrollPane and message rectractableOrNot. Have you tried locking your textMorph? You could also create a subclass of TextMorph that, upon a step, always sets its bounds to what you want it to be. Mark Guzdial


The moving of the due date from Friday to Thursday has presented quite a problem within our group. Being the last week before dead week, many classes have made this particular week a period for other projects to be turned in. Amongst our individual group members alone we have one midterm, a final project, and two other CS projects due on that Thursday. It would be greatly appreciatied by us, and probably all of the other groups, to use the Friday due date as previously planned.

Thank you for your consideration,

Team OCOPB

24 hours would make that much difference? Over a two week period? When the assignment has been available all term? Mark Guzdial

One minute is very significant for a person that is drowning!!

We can discuss it in class today. I'm willing to consider an extension until 1:00 pm on Friday. Mark Guzdial



I don't know how long this url will pose a problem...but the problem will still remain nonetheless. It seems squeak can't handle this Jpeg format. The code I use in the workspace is:

image := (ImageMorph new image:(HTTPSocket httpJpeg:
'http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/710000/images/_711753_mobile.jpg'))openInWorld.

this gives me Error: marker 16rC2 cannot be handled.
Is there anyway to get around this? Or will testing not involve jpg that squeak cannot handle?
Thanks in advance.

Team: God Object.




Yup, at least tonight (early friday morning) seems to have every jpg from espn being of a incompatible format for squeak's jpg generation. I can't get any from any article of espn to open in workspace code by just replacing urls after I've had the same code open cnn pics fine.

We hacked into the code that parses jpegs and attempted to "ignore" that type of marker (by expanding the list of already "okToIgnore" tags), but this caused even more errors reading those jpegs. Of course, updating the jpeg parser to handle this tag correctly would fix it. Has this been done already in the sources included with 2.8? Are we on the wrong track? Should we simply trap the error and not show images that fail to load properly with the current image loader (this would be the easiest solution, I think, but it would prevent MANY MANY images from being available in the postscript version of the newspaper)? Matthew Wolenetz of Squeak Times

There will always be some images that you can't deal with – even if it's not a case of Squeak being unable to render it (e.g., bad uploads). You need to trap for that error and deal with it. Yes, it may mean that many images are not available – that can happen to a real newspaper, too! But you must still have SOME image. Mark Guzdial

Are there any things like exception handlers in squeak like there are in java.
Yup – check out the class Exception. Also, look at ifError: as a way of catching all kinds of errors and exceptions. Mark Guzdial


My group did the web UI newspaper display before the mophic display seeing as how it was due first. Now, like every other person in this nation, I like to save myself time and energy whereever possible. Can't we just open a Scamper and have that be our morphic view? It is pretty easy to make columns with HTML. I havn't really looked into generating the postscript yet though.

You certainly can. I'll adjust the grading criteria to make sure that this gets marked down if you do it that way. Mark Guzdial
I'll ask in class today, but I would like some clarification on the required functionality of our implementation of the front page of the newspaper. Suppose our primary category has tons of sources, each with at least 2 or three articles, selected for inclusion in the newspaper by the user. Should we show ALL headlines (i.e., portions of ALL articles) of these primary category articles on the front page? To me, the project specification is unclear about this.
No, not all headlines have to be on the front page. Only one article HAS to be there, but multiple columns need to be there, and an image. Mark Guzdial

Also, if none of our primary category articles have an image, should we "steal" one (if one exists) from some other category's article. If so, I assume we move, not copy, that image to the front page, but leave the victimized article where it was (not on the front page). Is this correct?
Sure, but I'd put a caption "Story on p. 4" for usability sakes. Mark Guzdial

Finally, is it acceptable to fill the front page from non-primary category sources if there is not enough content in the primary category articles alone?
Matthew Wolenetz
Yes. Mark Guzdial

We are having a tough time generating the postscript version of the paper. We have a full fledged newspaper in a bookmorph. We then use asPostscript and it pink boxes. The error is "does not understand store bits: to: on:" (or something really similar).

Also, when we generate postscript for the individual pages of the bookmorph so that we get a postscript file for each page, things work fine. When we concatenate the postscript files to get one "newspaper.ps", we get postscript errors. (On a wishful note: Can we have it generate just the individual postscript files for the individual pages of the bookmorph for the final product?)

Has anyone else encountered these errors? Any suggestions on how to go about this would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,
Namrata Bachwani of Squeak Times
Update: We solved our problem. openInWorld, extent, addMorph, and position: weren't being done properly and in the right sequence when setting up the images.
I cannot manage to get images to embed themselves into a TextMorph properly without using the RedHalo menu,... I have attempted to implement the functionality of that in my code but the text just sits beneath the picture.

Basically I say myTextMorph addMorph: myImageMorph.
later I add that morph to the BookMorph and openInWorld.
But although the ImageMorph is listed as a submorph AND the TextMorph is set to avoid Occlusions the text goes behind the image.

Oh and the last group failed to explain what order those methods need to be used in...

These uncommented picky Gui objects are really ticking me off...
:(
Yeah, squeak is a pain about getting things in exactly the right order, i ended up just trying all the permutations. The trick you appear to be groping for is to add the Image and TextMorph to a container. Just make sure that the Image is on top, since a TextMorph only flows around Morphs that are stacked above it.

How, exactly, do you get a bookMorph to dynamically swap its pages in/out from a file as they are being created? We're having recurring "space is low" problems. Also, what is the exact command-line option for the NT VM installed in the CoC to specify memory size, and does NT allow this? Ditto for linux. Matthew Wolenetz

One quick question. When you are building your string and linking
it to other TextMorph's how do you determine if the next runs off the screen and you need to add another TextMorph. Any help with this would be great.

Chris Spears

Can anyone tell me how to change the font size in a TextMorph?

I wouldn't mind advice either...

see the "string:fontName:size:" method
Ok, how about changing the font size of _part_ of a text morph, ie a substring in it?

I'm not sure if this is a bug or what but
When I load an image such as 'morph.image' and then load a file
ex: StandardFileStream fileNamed: 'foo'
It does not know the directory that squeak is in so the attempt fails.
This problem does not occur if I rename 'morph.image' to 'Squeak2.7.image' and the changes file in the same manner
...
:( I hate squeak.

Links to this Page