Modular Squeak (was Re: Against wastefull[sic] forks)

Ned Konz ned at bike-nomad.com
Sun Mar 11 17:19:12 UTC 2001


On Sunday 11 March 2001 06:29, Paul Fernhout wrote:

> But, let's say for the sake of arguemnt you are right. Do you (or anyone
> else) have any ideas for how to make a modular Squeak in such a way that
> it would be easy for SqueakC to integrate it into ongoing changes?

Discipline. There are currently a number of places where it is necessary to 
make changes to existing methods if you want to extend the system in useful 
ways:

* menus are generated dynamically; if there were a registry for menu 
additions, it would be easier to extend the system. If I want to add a menu 
item, I typically have to change a method somewhere to do it.

* preferences changes have hardwired behavior in the Preferences class. Say I 
want to add an extension to the system that wants to know when someone has 
changed a flag; I have to add code to 
Preferences>>noteThatFlag:justChangedTo: . Very ugly.I 've posted changes 
that use dependent notification for Preferences changes but no one has seemed 
to be interested.

* event handling behavior is hard-wired in many places. If I want to change 
the default behavior for, say, blue button behavior, I have to come up with 
(at least) a new PasteUpMorph class.

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





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