AW: Squeak and the thing GUI

Tielemans, G.J. (DINKEL) G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl
Wed Jan 10 09:40:22 UTC 2001


Are you not talking about metaphors (or more explicit: objects behaving as
the common sense functionality of that metaphor according to the man of the
street.) I once saw a presentations of Bill Brixton (? maybe wrong name) who
did try to explain why windows are the wrong metaphor. He later joint
AliasWavefront, one of the big companies working on the visual effects-tools
for the movir world. I saw him later on a movie where he demonstrated an on
screen drwaiwingtool for graphical powerusers in these studio's. I did like
his ideas, but forgot the details.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Ingalls [mailto:Dan.Ingalls at disney.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 5:49 AM
To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: AW: Squeak and the thing GUI


"Hans N. Beck" wrote:
>> > It's probably not too hard to accomplish, but it doesn't sound like
>> > something Squeak Central would want to spend time on.  I imagine that
>> > when you spend time thinking about computers of the future, it's hard
to
>> > step back and interoperate with the inferior computers of today.
>> > [Hans N. Beck]  Please, can you explain this statement a little more ?
do you mean a single
>> > window is the future, or what else ?????

Juan Manuel Vuletich <jmvuletich at sinectis.com.ar> wrote:
>> No, the idea is to forget about windows, and have something more
>> general, malleable and powerful. In a word, Objects.

"Lex Spoon" <lex at cc.gatech.edu> wrote...
>That's the future.  It's not toooo hard, though, for Squeak apps to
>integrate much more nicely with existing window systems.  "All" that is
>necessary is to add the ability to open native windows.  It's important,
>by the way, to continue to allow for the case that only one big window
>is available; probably there'd have to be some sort of
>SystemWindow>>open that just does the right thing.  Furthermore, I
>suppose that incoming mouse events are going to have to say what window
>was clicked in.
>
>Still, it's a lot of details to worry about, and doing such things isn't
>as much fun when you've been thinking about a better way.

It's true that SQC hasn't been focussed on how to mate Squeak apps with
multiple host windows, because our REAL model is we own the machine.
Nonetheless, note the evolution of Morphic from project/worlds in a
hierarchical structure to worlds within worlds that are simultaneously
active.  So multiple morphic worlds in multiple host windows is, I think, a
fine point of convergence.

	- Dan





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