Hmmmm...

I was never a Hypercard fan for some of the same reason that I dislike virtually
all GUI development environments that I have experienced: ultimately I end up
with a picture of my environment, but the parts that make it work are separate
and difficult to comprehend in the context of the GUI.

Hypercard was particularly bad in this regard, or at least it was for me.

The NeXT Interface Builder was better, and I like much of how it works and hope
that a version of Squeak that can work with IB can be efficiently constructed.

But even IB leaves relationships between its elements and the code that makes
them work to what's effectively another layer.  I'd rather be able to touch a
component and be able to see ALL the things which affect and are affected by it.

I can draw this easier than I can describe it. But the result is the enabling
code and the picture of the GUI object are inspectable and graphically
displayable so that you can SEE the data flow, but in a better way than that
Pictorix (?) dataflow language worked. I shouldn't have to remember the NAME of
the object i want to manipulate (although that should work.) I should be able to
say graphically: work on THIS object.  For beginners (and the easily confused
like me) that's essential. It needs to be kept concrete so you can really SEE
the messages that are sendable to the GUI object. 

Sigh -- I might have to make a sketch of this because it's really bothered me
for years.

I guess Morphic doesn't do it for me because while its attractive, its neither
simple nor obvious. For beginners, and people who don't want to have to leap
into the innards, pulling together the parts of an interface should be much more
obvious and intuitive. By this time the elements of a GUI are pretty well known.
But hooking them up easily is not.

Excuse the drool.

Adam