[Newbies] Feedback: Using Output as the Next Input

[Ralph Johnson]

On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Dan Norton <dnorton at mindspring.com> wrote:

>  Writing and reading files can be done easily. For Cuis, I summarized the
> protocol in World > Help... > Terse Guide to Cuis > File Streams. If a file
> is used for the output, then it will have to be parsed in some way in the
> future.
>

A file can be AN output, not THE output.   In general, it is useful to have
a variety of outputs.  I was thinking of creating text files in addition to
what you are doing now.

But, yes, one alternative is for the history of the drawings to be kept in
a file and read in when you start up.  That would require parsing the
file.  But I was assuming that was not what you meant.

A GUI might be appropriate for a user who does not like computers, but a
> definite requirement IMO is to not have the IDE obvious.
>

Horrors!  Don't show the IDE unless the user is a programmer!

1) The trivial way to hide the IDE (while making it easy to get it back if
you want it)

Open the window for the application (assuming you built a GUI for your
application).   Close all other windows, especially windows for the IDE.
Save the image.

Now, when people start up the image, the first thing they see will be the
window for the application.  On the other hand, they can still get a menu
to create a browser if they want to, so the IDE is only slightly hidden.

2) A much more complete way to hide the IDE.   When the virtual machine
starts up an image, it runs a bit of code (I think it actually runs a block
that is stored in a class variable somewhere, but it has been a long time
since I have looked at it) that redraws the windows and starts up a process
to follow the mouse and the keyboard.   You can change this to have it
start up your own application.   This is useful if you are trying to build
a video game in Squeak.  If you do this, you can hide everything except
your application.  There will be no way to get a browser, though usually
you will still get a debugger if there is an error, and you can then
evaluate an expression to open up a browser.   If you REALLY want to hide
the browser, delete its classes from the system.   Of course, that makes
debugging hard if you find an error later.

In either case, it is possible to merge the image file with the virtual
machine file to create a single, double-clickable file.   That way, your
customer can just double-click the file and run the application.  It has
been many years since I have done this, but I have often told students
about it and they tell me it isn't hard.   See
http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/778.diff?id=42
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