Installing and Running Squeak
Last updated at 2:26 am UTC on 11 April 2007
This is chapter 1 of the Squeak Tutorial.
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If you have not already done so, download Squeak now
Once you have Squeak running, you should see the Squeak world:
[need an image of 3.9]
[image of the desktop of a squeak-3.8-6665full.image]
The most interesting thing you can do at this point is to open the World Menu.
You will see many options in the World Menu, including the ability to quit squeak, navigate between projects, and open tools. The open option is the most interesting. Select it. We will be using the open menu quite a bit, so you may want to leave it open by pressing the pushpin button on the top.
The Workspace
Select Workspace from the open menu. The workspace is just a text editor, but text editors in Squeak are very powerful. All text panes in Squeak can execute Smalltalk code. For a list of the capabilities of the text editor, hit the Esc key or right-click while in the Workspace. As an example, type 3 + 4
in the workspace and press alt-p (cmd-p on a Macintosh). Squeak executes the statement and prints the result directly in the Workspace. This is the option 'Print it' in the menu. 'Do it' executes the statement, and 'Debug it' starts the debugger on the statement.
The Transcript
Select Transcript from the open menu. The Transcript is a window to print messages to. It serves the same purpose as stdout in C, and System.out in Java. For example, type Transcript show: 3 + 4
in the Workspace, and hit alt-d ('Do it'). 7 should be printed to the Transcript.
These are the most basic components of the Squeak environment. Let us now examine The Smalltalk Language.
Should we cover the image, Change Sets, and the fact that all changes are logged? New users do not know that killing the UI does not mean all unsaved changes are lost. We should incorperate What to do if Squeak crashes or freezes.
You should say clearly if this tutorial is based on Squeak 3.8 or 3.9. I'd recommend 3.8, as long as 3.9 does not have these introductory windows (Readme.txt, Welcome to Squeak).
