Widgets and Books for Squeak

R. A. Harmon harmonra at webname.com
Sat Mar 25 12:20:05 UTC 2000


At 04:04 PM 3/24/00 -0500, you wrote:
>At 2:21 PM -0600 3/24/2000, R. A. Harmon wrote:
>>At 11:17 AM 3/24/00 -0500, John Gardner wrote:
>>[snip]
>>>Your response does seem to imply something. Does the entire Squeak community
>>>believe that MVC is a waste of time and that the default UI should 
>>>be Morphic?
>>
>>Dan Ingalls announced a month or two ago that MVC will be removed from
>>Squeak Central release in the near future.
>
>I didn't understand that to be the case at all.  What I understood is 
>that SqC intends to make Morphic the "standard" environment, not to 
>excise MVC from the image.

I think "excise from the release" from his post below means excise from the
image.  The "model/dependents architecture and change/update protocols" is
what won't be removed.


http://www.egroups.com/group/squeak/10571.html?

Subject: Re: MVC is Dead?
 From: Dan Ingalls




[A clarification -- when we at Squeak Central (SqC) refer to "MVC", we are
usually
referring to the "old ST-80 viewing structures" and their control regime
(View/Ctlr,
SSView/Ctlr, and ControlManager).  We consider the model/dependents
architecture and
change/update protocols to be of enduring value in Squeak as in MVC]. 

  
  At 09:34 PM 2/1/00 -0600, Les Tyrrell wrote: 
    
    If the support is there to power Morphic, I'd think that the support
will always be in place to
    resurrect MVC, should it be dropped from the baseline. 

  [snip] 


"R. A. Harmon" harmonr- at webname.com replied... 
  
  I don't share your optimism on this point.  I think it would slowly become
a dead path.  Less bugs
  would get fixed, less enhancements get added, less people use it, so less
bugs would get fixed,
  less enhancements get added, less people use it, . . . .  It appears to me
that additional "widget?"
  are added to morphic but not in a way that they can be used in MVC--I'm
not familiar enough
  with morphic to tell for sure. 


This is already the case -- MVC is currently maintained for backward
compatibility (with
documentation, etc) -- it is not the site of most enhancements and of
Squeak's general
forward motion (animation, 3D, music and sound support, etc). 

  
  I think this is a route that will diminish Squeaks accessibility to folks
new to Smalltalk as most
  books on Smalltalk and code freely available (other dialects) don't use
morphic.  Trying to
  translate MVC to morphic adds a level of complexity to learning from the
books and code.  This
  is enough to dissuade someone from getting over the OOP-think hump. 


This is why we have kept MVC so far.  That familiarity and compatibility
with other STs is a
valuable component in the overall synergy. 

Regarding the OOP-think hump, we at SqC consider NEITHER Morphic nor MVC to be
adequate.  We still feel that an entirely new approach is needed here --
along the lines of Morphic
viewers somehow integrated with a real inspector/browser/debugger, with
maybe a few things
borrowed from Fabrik and Morphic Wrappers.  Wish us luck (or beat us to it!). 

  
  I think the newbies and tools are both useful in getting to the next plane. 


Absolutely. 

We do not plan to decommission (excise from the release) MVC until the time
when nearly everyone
who uses Squeak does so as an environment unto itself, not as a free
alternative to other similar
Smalltalks where MVC compatibility is important.  We feel that this could
happen within the current
year (but we had the same feeling a year ago ;-).  Whenever the time comes,
we will produce a
"Last Picture Show" image that is the cleanest and most complete MVC-based
image possible, so
that it can be used and maintained indefinitely by motivated MVC survivalists. 

  
  Isn't Morphic about due for the long-awaited refactoring? 


Yes, indeed.  This is another nice thing about retaining MVC for a while.
It gives us a place to stand
when making major changes to Morphic. 

     - Dan 
--
Richard A. Harmon          "The only good zombie is a dead zombie"
harmonra at webname.com           E. G. McCarthy
Spencer, Iowa





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