Hi Bob,

I guess I've been through something similar too, having done UI's in
Delphi before. Luckily I also work in DCL (Dialogue Contol Language)
which is a textual description where you put your widgets into groups
of rows and columns. I found an example of this kind in Sunit's
TestRunner.

So after this I've done one UI by just programming a method like in
TestRunner>>openAsMorph (at least in 3.6 and 3.7) and then doing
manual alignments for my aesthetic preferences.

Actually I find this method easier than what you do in Delphi/VB as
soon as you have changes like: "I need another group of controls
between these two groups of controls". This ends up in a lot of manual
dragging and resizing.

But then I'm used to doing a sketch on paper (which I can do by just
placing the widgets on screen in Squeak) and writing down my DCL.

The other UI I did in Squeak just ignores the MS-Office design. It
just has a MonthMorph as to select a date, a PluggableListMorph to
select a person and several alpha blended rectangular Morphs as a
display on what this person spent it's time on. It will get another
selector for products and to change the display to day week or Month.

I just opened these elements (except for the display, which is an
independent class) from the workspace, put them where I needed them
and plugged them into the data model which digs the information out of
a Mysql database.

1- I surely believe that it would take a more effort to do this in
the conventional style.
2- I'm sure that when I hand the program to the users, I will not need
to explain how to use it.

Simon already pointed to Bob's UI, at the time I tried it (3.6), I had
some problems loading it and it couldn't match Delphi.

My experience was, when I stopped reading every morphic example with
the expectation to find something like Delphi, the frustration
stopped. And believe me, I was frustrated :-))

BTW I just stumbled over Mezzo http://symphonyos.com/laws.html or
google for MezzoGraypaper.pdf

Couldn't agree more, the MS-Office style of UI is not the solution for
all GUI's.

Cheers,


Herbert                            mailto:herbertkoenig at gmx.net