On Thursday 22 March 2001 07:13, Karl Wilson wrote:

> Rather than starting with the complex
> finished product - to start with the simple peices and see how they
> are put together. Like - for a given interesting application - be
> able to watch it being built from the beginning - as a way to learn
> how to approach design, as well as a way to approach figuring out how
> things work.

This is one of the important parts missing from so many magazine articles and 
attempts at documentation. Being able to see the paths not taken, or the 
paths tried and discarded can be as useful as seeing the path eventually 
decided upon.

One of the more important parts of the structured documentation of Design 
Patterns is that you get a feel for the context, and get a discussion of when 
the pattern is inappropriate.

Similarly in documenting large finished systems, there needs to be some kind 
of context to answer questions like:
	* why was this used and not that?
	* why was this used in this way when it seems that another way would have 
worked better?
	* have you thought of...

I'd like to be able to document/demonstrate the building of a software system 
sequentially, using live objects and text, and be able to show changes to the 
system over time.

I don't think the current authoring/programming environment in Squeak 
supports that directly; there is the assumption that everything is already 
compiled in and ready to run.

Or is there?

Projects support isolation and reverting.

Projects can be chained using the InternalThreadNavigationMorph.

Projects can carry their own change sets along with them.

So is it possible to have the first project of a presentation be isolated (so 
it can be reverted), and have other projects linked to it so that we see the 
incremental development of a software system?

Would it be possible to navigate back to the prior project and see the system 
the way it was before loading the current project? (i.e could all the chained 
projects be isolated)?

-- 
Ned Konz
currently: Stanwood, WA
email:     ned at bike-nomad.com
homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com