How to improve Squeak

lex at cc.gatech.edu lex at cc.gatech.edu
Tue Jul 13 17:49:05 UTC 2004


"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
> It may well be that BookMorphs *should* die, but PLEASE, someone write
> a *DETAILED* tutorial about how to get the same funcationality from the
> other aspects of the system FIRST.
> 
> And I do mean detailed.  About the level of the documentation that
> BookMorph should have had in the first place, in fact.


Okay.  :)  Really, the functionality is there, and Squeak Central does
not use BookMorph, and I have watched the UI develop to phase out
BookMorph in favor of other mechanisms.  I almost always use Squeak
instead of PowerPoint or Latex, and yet I haven't used BookMorph in many
years.

To make a better analogy, fixing up BookMorph for 3.7 is like trying to
make PROGMAN.EXE from Windows 3.1 work in Windows XP.  There can be long
discussions about it, and probably you can succeed to some level, but in
the end it's a silly thing to do.  This isn't just a matter of
preferences; we are talking about a UI component that has been
deliberately redesigned into something better.

Following the analogy, if you really really like Program Manager from
Windows 3.1, then you may as well just stick with 3.1.  You'll probably
be a lot happier.  If you really like BookMorph, then stick with Squeak
2.8.  You'll have company....

For people wanting to use the newer style, though, let me give a few
pointers.  I am sorry I cannot give a full tutorial, but the following
should really be enough.  This is simple stuff I think:

	1. Instead of pages, use entire projects.

	2. Instead of a "next" and "previous" buttons from BookMorph, use
	   InternalThreadNavigationMorph's.  Go ahead andopen one up if
	   you are curiuos; it will drop itself to the bottom right corner of
	   the screen.

	3. Instead of book's, make "threads".  If you click in the middle of
	   an ITNM you will get a lot of options for creating and manipulating
	   threads -- options very similar to BookMorph's menu when you click
	   the little circle.  To get started, you should probably "create a
thread
	   of all projects" and then edit it down to what you want.
	    

That's it, poor man's powerpoint and no BookMorph.  What features have I
left out that people are wondering about?


Oh, one other thing I should mention, especially if someone wants to
redo a half-completed BookMorph as a thread of projects:

	4. Make a flap called "Scratch" that you use to transfer stuff between
projects.  Flaps are terrific if you are jumping between projects a lot.
 As one example, you can transfer a morph between two projects by going
to project A, dumping the morph in the flap, going to project B, and
removing the morph from the flap.  Simple.  So go make that flap; if you
author in Squeak a lot, I bet you end up using it!
	
	

goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:
> I never bothered with SqueakPages etc, because I knew that was rotten
> anyway.

Dude, SqueakPage is part of BookMorph.  :)


Anyway, there happens to be some space on the Swiki for discussing
presentations in Squeak.  If anyone is really psyched about this area
then they should flesh it out a little.

	http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3486

It even includes a short tutorial on ITNM plus an email from Alan Kay
about ITNM's that is dated July 2001.

-Lex



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