On Sat, 6 Jan 2001, Hans N. Beck wrote:

> I'm new bee to Squeak,

Willkommen, Hans!

> I have done my first steps with Squeak/WinNT. After the first
> look, there comes following questions related to GUI: 
> 
> - Can Sqeak used for GUI development ?

Of course! I'd even say Squeak is the ultimate tool to develop new GUIs.

> I know that prof. Smalltalks have full Win32 GUI binding, COM bindung
> etc. On the other side: Morpic seems interesting, but it's only a
> thing of squeak, isn't it, not portable ?

Actually it is portable *exactly* because it does not use the platfrom GUI
stuff.

> - The relationship of standard MVC Interface to Morphic: If I can use
> MVC for GUI development/prototyping, why needing Morphic (let the
> knifes in, I'm a newbee ....) The other case: the old-fashioned ST-80
> system with MVC is'nt powerful for GUI development, so a Smalltalker
> is fixed to his system with his GUI framework specific for his
> Dolphin, Smalltalk/X, Squeak (Morphic) ......

Morphic is something like an OO-framebuffer. It's not just pixels on the
screen like most other GUIs but everything you see is an object (a Morph)
that can be manipulated and assembled into more complex entities like
dialogs or menus or whatever. You can learn about the Morphic philosophy
in the numerous Self papers (http://www.sun.com/research/self/)

> - where can I find ressources to MVC/Morphic GUI building, until know´
> I could not find anything in the Web bigger as 5 pages.... (but of
> course, I've not seen al :-(((

Whom do you expect to write more than 5 pages? ;^)

There are tutorials mentioned at squeak.org, also there is some on the
Swiki, and you could buy the first Squeak book. As for MVC, any
old Smalltalk book should do.

> - and at least: would it be possible to use the Linux GUI "Berlin"
> (http://www.berlin-consortium.org/), which can be connected via CORBA,
> to work as GUI renderer for Squeak ?

It might be possible - but it surely is not a beginner's project.
Basically you would have to implement a Canvas connecting to the Berlin
engine instead of the Balloon engine (Squeak's 2D render engine).

-- Bert