On 14 Jul 2002 22:11:08 +0200 Chris Burkert
<christian.burkert at s2000.tu-chemnitz.de> wrote:

>>Hi there

>> In the last 2 Months I tried out Squeak and was >>it. But I (and all
other's I talked about it) >>missed a powerfull tool
>>for building a GUI. It would be great for Squeak >>to provide such a tool
>>and I'm sure many people would take a look at >>Squeak today, instead of
>>Java tomorrow. 

Regards
Chris Burkert

Chris;

I am working on a new version of BobsUI that will do a lot of what you are
asking for.  BobsUI is Squeak's solution for "rectangular programming", or in
other words regular business programming. 

In the next version of BobsUI:

- The previous versions widgets are mostly intact.

- Added widgets: 
    Check Boxes
    Radio Buttons
    Drop Down Lists
    Spin Buttons
    Sliders
    Menu Bars
    Menus
    Panels
    
- Most construction is done with drag and drop, but within a Squeak way of
doing things.  I use  flaps and stacks for my widget palettes, for instance.

- The windows are composed, and written to a window spec using XML.  They are
built from XML with a builder, and can be re-edited.  This area of BobsUI is
pretty similar to the VisualWorks way of writing window specs. 

- A split between development and runtime, so the runtime user is not able to
manipulate the widgets.

- Themes/Skins can be created fairly cleanly with a moderate amount of effort.
 The XML specs are not specific to any class, so implementing a new builder
class and/or adding new widgets can create a new look from the same spec.


Mostly, all this is working now. I have a couple of months to go yet filling
in details, cleanup, and documentation before I would consider it ready for an
alpha release.   When I finish this release, it will still have some things
missing, but it will be one or two versions away from a GUI builder that is as
good as any other product's GUI builder.