Squeak People diary for Chronos

14 Apr 2006

Fri, 14 Apr 2006 08:26:59 -0700

How fast is Chronos relative to Squeak's "out of the box" date/time classes? My blog post The Timing of Time: Chronos Benchmarks presents some data that address that question.

13 Apr 2006

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 05:12:24 -0700

Version B1.167 of Chronos has been published for both Squeak and VisualWorks. For details, see the Chronos Blog.

4 Apr 2006

Tue, 04 Apr 2006 06:45:37 -0700

Version B1.160 of Chronos has been published for both Squeak and VisualWorks. For details, see the Chronos Blog.

22 Mar 2006

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 02:30:45 -0700

A new, highgly-functional version of the Chronos Date/Time Library has been published for Squeak.

What's Chronos? See http://www.chronos-st.org/.

The new version of Chronos for Squeak, unlike the version initially published (and still the only version available from SqueakSource [as of 21 March],) can be safely installed by file-in. Also unlike the initial version currently available on SqueakSource, it can read reference data from the file system--especially including time zone rulesets. It can also persist reference data in the local file system. The Chronos Time Zone Compiler can be installed, and it can be used to compile Chronos time zone rule files from the Olson zoneinfo source files.

However, the current Squeak version still does not have all the functionality of the VisualWorks version. Here's what's still missing:

* Determination of the host system time zone (this would require new primitives or FFI function libraries--and is something that is not at all on my to-do list)

* Support for any Locale other than #en_US--I may (or may not) decide to use the data published by the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) Project to provide such functionality for Squeak (and for other Smalltalk implementations as well,) but that won't happen for many months yet, if it happens at all [ref: http://www.unicode.org/cldr/]

* Convenience methods implemented in Squeak classes that leverage Chronos (e.g., String>>asTimezone, Number>>hours, etc.)--the issue here, of course, is interference with the native Chronology library's own such convenience methods (Note: Implementing such convenience methods for Chronos is the sole responsibility of the Squeak community)

* Type-compatibility of Chronos classes with the analogous Chronology classes (Note: Implementing such type-compatibility methods for Chronos (or Chronos-compatibility for Chronology, for that matter) is the sole responsibility of the Squeak community)

For full details, including installation instructions, see: http://chronos-st.blogspot.com/2006/03/squeak-version-of-chronos-published.html

25 Feb 2006

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 00:05:04 -0700

Version B1.60 of the Chronos Date/Time Library has been published. The publication announcement includes information that might be of interest to anyone who is even remotely thinking about porting Chronos from VisualWorks to some other Smalltalk environment.

19 Feb 2006

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 00:13:40 -0700

Schedule of Squeak Chats for 2006

I have published a list of the starting times for all Squeak Chats that occur during 2006--with local time shown for selected world time zones. It's available from the Chronos web site. Also shown is the Chronos code used to generate the schedule.

17 Feb 2006

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 05:23:23 -0700

Version B1.55 of the Chronos Date/Time Library has been published. Parsing of dates/times is now supported.

Chronos is available from the Chronos web site: http://www.chronos-st.org.

Also, the "seed" version of the code (which is in a format consumable by Squeak, Dolphin and Smalltalk/X, and which does not attempt to initialize itself on file-in) is available at the following URL: http://www.chronos-st.org/downloads/Chronos-Seed.zip

I will be publishing detailed instructions on producing the "seed" version from the VisualWorks version soon, as well as instructions on how to use the files in Chronos-Seed.zip to port Chronos to other Smalltalk environments. I'll also be giving credit to someone who provided significant help in this regard, but whose name must for now remain hidden.

3 Feb 2006

Fri, 03 Feb 2006 08:05:00 -0700

I have posted an essay on the matter of discovering the host system's time zone, so that either the VisualWorks or Squeak VM and/or image can synchronize with it: Discovering the Local Time Zone--Why It's a Hard Problem. This may perhaps be of some interest to the Squeak community.

10 Jan 2006

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 10:28:41 -0700

Example code to compute the date/time of all Squeak Chats for the next year--in selected world time zones--has been posted on the Chronos Blog.

6 Jan 2006

Fri, 06 Jan 2006 21:24:49 -0700

Version B1.4 of Chronos Published.

For details, see the Chronos Blog.