[clean-list] Re: Problems with Windows Install

[Al Christians]

clean-list-admin@cs.kun.nl wrote:
> 
> 
> > I've just tried to get started with the new release of Clean.
> > Some troubles right away.  I follow the instructions in the
> > UserManual.pdf file for the first example -- the game of life.
> > When I try to "Update and Run", I get errors:
> >
> > Error[StdEnv.dcl,26,import]; toReal multiply defined
> > Error[StdEnv.dcl,26,import]; toInt multiply defined
> >
> > Any hints?
> 
> Ah a typical result of later than last-minute changes. Fix this
> by removing or commenting out lines 13 and 14 of the module 'StdString.dcl'
> where it declares:
> 
> instance toInt {#Char}
> instance toReal {#Char}
> 
> these have been moved elsewhere and the declaration should have been
> removed.
> 
> The easiest way to do this is from the project you have created: Launch the
> Ide and open your project (it should still be in recent projects in the File
> menu), then select 'Open Definition Module...' from the File menu and enter
> "StdString.dcl". The Ide should now open the StdString module where you can
> remove the offending two lines. Save the module and Run your project; things
> should now work as advertised.
> 
> Apologies for the inconvenience,
>

Thanks for the quick update.  That works fine.  

Two much more minor notes about the release:

1. When doing an 'update and run' on almost any of the example
programs, there is a message that pops up asking where is 
StdEnv.  This is easy enough to figure out, but Clean will probably
make a nicer impression on some if this didn't happen.

2. The talk and scrabble demo programs still suffer on my system
because I've got large fonts, ie:

   (Under NT)
   Settings ... Control Panel ... Display ... Settings ... Large Fonts

In particular, in Scrabble, some of the messages in the box that shows
red-on-black text are not readable because they don't fit into the 
allotted area.  It is possible to resize the scrabble screen 
vertically so that it looks like nothing is lost at the bottom of the 
screen, but if that is not done, the lowermost control is not shown.  
Horizontally, I can't make the screen wide enough to look good, and 
although I think that nothing is lost off the right hand side of the 
screen, I'm not sure, and without seeing all of the messages (the 
red-on-black box does not resize), I didn't figure out how to get the 
game to work.  

The talk application opens up looking ugly (with the text areas 
right up against the right edge of the screen).  Resizing that screen 
to a larger size makes it look even uglier.  

Since I use large fonts almost all the time, I'm used to seeing such
problems.  Very many other development tools act just as bad or worse.  
I won't mind this problem too much, because if I develop an app with 
large fonts, it usually comes out looking OK (maybe a little sparse
or spacious) when run with small fonts.  Maybe 98% use small fonts;
font size is just something to keep in mind if you want a program that 
will work for 100%.  I suppose that Windows makes that really hard, as 
so few seem to have solved the problem well.

Thanks very much for a nice product.

Is there any way to get Clean programs to talk COM, either as a client
or server?


Al