Developping in Squeak

Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus schwa at cc.gatech.edu
Mon Jul 7 06:18:21 UTC 2003


On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 01:09:00AM +0000, Guillaume Pothier wrote:
> Hi!
> First of all I must say that I am new to Squeak, and very excited about 
> it. I have many questions in my mind, but I will start with the few that 
> come to my mind right now.
> 
> * Writing Smalltalk code.
> As far as I understand, the Browser is the place to explore/create code, 
> isn't it? 

Yes.  Well, the Browser and Workspaces and Debuggers.

> I wonder if there are projects to create alternative 
> development environments for smalltalk code. For instance, there is one 
> thing that I have on my mind for some time: I would really like to be 
> able to navigate in packages, classes and methods within classes 
> spatially, via a zoomable interface or such (3d?). Should I start to try 
> to implement that, or is there already something similar?

AFAIK, there's nothing like that already in existence for Squeak.  That 
sounds like fun.  Rather than starting to implement it from scratch, you
will probably want to wait for the first public beta release of Croquet.
It has fast 3D graphics via OpenGL, and a scripting system that will
greatly facilitate creating the type of interface you describe.

> One other thing, it seems to me that I saw in a tutorial that there were 
> an autocomplete feature in the browser, but I can not retrieve it.

Start typing a method/class name and repeatedly press Alt-W to cycle through
all possible completions.

> Is 
> there such a thing? For instance, I start typing a class or message and 
> press ctrl+space, and I can choose between the possible completions...
> 
> * Input/output
> I am particularly intersted in bimanual interaction, is it possible to 
> access various physical mice, or other devices on a single computer? 

Morphic is structured to allow multiple HandMorphs to operate at the same
time, and it is possible to have multiple input devices each control a
separate HandMorph.  So, yes.

> More generally, does an generic input framework exists?
> Is there support for multiple screens? 

Not currently.

> Multiple sound input/output devices?

I don't know.

> * OpenCroquet
> Does someone know the state of this project? The download page claims 
> that another alpha version will be available in... april, or something 
> like that...

The mailing-list archive on opencroquet.org suggests that we might see
the next version by the end of the summer.

> 
> * Widgets
> After going through a few tutorials, I wanted to create my own program. 
> This is a very simple accounting program that uses a postgreSQL backend, 
> and displays informations in lists or tables, and uses basic forms as 
> user input. As I come from the Java world, I started to search "standard 
> widgets" in Morphic, such as Lists, Tables, etc., but I did not find 
> such old-fashioned components. Do they exist, 

Sure they exist!  How else would Browsers work?  Take a look at
PluggableListMorph, PluggableButtonMorph, etc.

> or is there a preferred 
> way to do that kind of thing? I was thinking, maybe for such a 
> simplistic program I should stick to MVC? (well, by the way I did not 
> even look if there are such widgets in MVC...)

No, Morphic is much more fun.

Best,
Joshua

> 
> Thanks in advance!
> Guillaume
> 



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