On Apr 20, 2007, at 11:18 AM, J J wrote:

> Related to Ffenestri, doesn't the Squeak VM try to open the normal  
> window first and then get told not to or something like that?  How  
> hard would it be to have the display part of the code be a class  
> that is configurable at start time so that the image could start in  
> Ffenestri, some other display or even headless without doing the  
> extra work?


Well that depends on the VM, currently when the VM runs non-headless  
at some point it cheerfully opens a window. When this happens is a VM  
issue.
The macintosh VM would not open the window until the first draw to  
the Display occurs. This decision was done about 10 years back  
because the original written code would open the window, but Squeak  
would take many seconds on 25Mhz 68030 machines to get around to  
drawing leaving you with a white window.

The side effect of this is when people make changes to morphic and  
seriously break it one can open an image on the mac and not get a  
window because
the drawing code is never executed. However this then blocks the  
cmd-'.' because the keyboard handlers are not installed since that  
requires a window.

On *other* platforms I believe the window would open, and cmd-'.'  
would work.

3.8.17b1 which I have not released yet has a info.plist setting that  
decides if the image must explicitly open the main window, versus  
auto-opening. It
also allows you to close the main window, and later reopen the main  
window, or have the image decide exactly when the window should be  
opened.


For the mac carbon VM there is other complexity because when using as  
the base for the browser plugin ,it runs without a window, but when you
switch to full screen, it must then come to the foreground, and  
install a window and install the keyboard/mouse handlers. Later when  
you switch out of full screen it hides the window and switchs the  
browser to the foreground which then accepts the keyboard/mouse  
events and passes them to the VM for interpretation.


--
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com>
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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