Peter Dinges wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I recently started to study Morphic and its implementation in Squeak, Pharo, 
> and mostly Cuis. Reading through the code, I noticed that there currently are 
> three implementations of "events". All of them are mechanisms to signal state 
> changes; two are very generic, the third specializes in Morphic input. 
>
> Slightly confused by the many meanings of "event", I began to sort the 
> different parts and assign them unique names. The result of this process is a 
> short tutorial on Events in Squeak, Pharo, and Cuis. It might reduce confusion 
> for people starting their tour through the code, or simply help when using 
> events in own projects.
>
> You can download it from
>
> 	http://www.elwedgo.de/fileadmin/events_in_smalltalk.pdf
>
> I would greatly appreciate any comments, ideas, or corrections.
>
> Thanks and have a good day,
> Peter
>   

Hi Peter,

Nice writing, thank you! Just a few comments.
- #when:send:to: and #changed/#update serve a similar purpose, and only 
one of them is really needed. Their main use is to reflect model changes 
in user interfaces. For instance, PluggableMorphs use #changed/#update 
and LightWidgets use #when:send:to: for this.
- At the implementation notes of #changed/#update you forgot about class 
Model.
- At the implementation notes of #when:send:to: you didn't mention that 
ActiveModel is an optimization, using own actionMap instance variable 
and not the dictionary in the class side. This optimization is not 
unlike the one in Model.
- MorphicEvents are really something really different... They are not 
message sends, but objects. This is not an implementation of the 
observer pattern, there is no mechanism for message delivery. Instead, 
MorphicEvents are stateful objects that are sent around until handled.
- You forgot the AbstractEvent hierarchy. While this is not as general 
as #when:send:to: and #changed/#update, it is closer to them than 
MorphicEvents are. AbstractEvent is used to notify various Smalltalk 
tools of system changes.

I hope you find these comments useful on your journey. Please keep your 
document updated with further explorations!

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich