<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 2:33 PM, Dan Norton <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:dnorton@mindspring.com" target="_blank">dnorton@mindspring.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
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<div align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt">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. </span></font><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt"><br>
</span></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);border-left-style:solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
<div align="left"><font face="Arial" size="2"><span style="font-size:10pt">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.</span></font></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Horrors! Don't show the IDE unless the user is a programmer!</div><div><br></div><div>1) The trivial way to hide the IDE (while making it easy to get it back if you want it)</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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 <a href="http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/778.diff?id=42">http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/778.diff?id=42</a></div><div> </div></div><br></div></div>