"Alejandro F. Reimondo" <aleReimondo at sugarweb.com> wrote:
> Parts for Smalltalk works connecting objects with links.
> The objects can be visual (GUI) objects or non-visual.
> You can save your work in aFile with the component,
>   later you can use the component (loaded from file).
> You can connect the parts with point & drag; but if you want to, you can
write
>  a new method for any object. The method will be bound to the object (not
to
>  its class) to expand the part or to implement a more convenient message
>  in the context where the part is been used.
What we're getting into here is the advantage of instance-methods, or more
radically, prototype object models, for dynamic GUI building environments.
A couple interesting examples of such systems include:

* Amulet, done by Brad Myers' group at CMU, in which they implemented a
prototype object model on top of C++(!):


http://www.cs.cmu.edu:80/afs/cs/project/amulet/www/amulet-overview.html

*SK8, done at Apple (a project with which I was associated for awhile),
with a prototype object model implemented on top of Lisp:
     http://sk8.research.apple.com/        <--- Sigh... this link appears
to be dead.

*NewtonScript, a relative of Self, with a really funky
inheritance/containment model.

*Hmm... I bet we can consider Cocoa (now Stagecast) to be built with
prototypes, too :-)
     http://www.stagecast.com/

Mike Wirth