Morph Window -> Class? (was: [Newbies] error loading .pr

[Herbert König]

Hello Andrew,



AD> One drawback of images is that they tend to be quite large.  The .pr
AD> files are small so that strikes as better way of distributing programs.

as I said it depends on what you (and I :-)) mean by packaged. I meant
a shrinkwrapped Windows app, You seemed to talk about distributing to
squeakers.

In this case Monticello and SqueakMap are kind of standard tools. But
as Edgar pointed out sar is a good way too, if you want to include
media. For MC distribution you have to stuff media into a method
(search squeak dev) which I find cumbersome. I will change that
opinion of mine as soon as i need versioned media.

AD> I understand you to mean that you test out an interface design
AD> interactively, but then do start over coding the whole gui from scratch
AD> in smalltalk.

Not quite. I come from a history of sketching the gui with pencil and
paper. That's what I do by placing morphs in a project. There it's
easier to move them and check for "mouse miles". Mouse miles maybe is
my private invention but I check for mouse movements necessary to
perform typical tasks.

Then I put in magenta Strings for the names I intend to give to the
elements (ivars in the app) and blue strings for the methods I plan to
send. I then print it and start coding.

AD> That's kind of tragic.  Squeak is wonderful environment for building
AD> things, it shouldn't be necessary still do all the coding of the final
AD> product textually.  Many WYSIWYG gui builders exist, I would have 
AD> thought Squeak would be a leader there.

I used Delphi (Versions 2 to 5) and I don't think so. It's ok for
simple things and you still have to note the name of the elements of
the gui on a printout if you don't want to look them up.
mainForm.myLabel.text := 'asdf'. Yuck.

VC++ and VB where worse in those times.

AD> I think for my purposes (building simple apps, no ambition to be a
AD> professional grade developer) I ought to use the 3.8 image and work with
AD> projects.  I hope that projects will be supported in later versions of
AD> the image.

I use projects for more than one app in one image. Context menu of the
world contains the the app's name and jumps to the project.

Be aware that imho 3.8 and earlier projects don't load into 3.9. But I
guess projects will be continued, at least in the squeakland image,
for very long.


Cheers

Herbert                            mailto:herbertkoenig at gmx.net