On 06/26/2013 05:49 PM, Chris Muller wrote:
> Let me offer another cold, hard example.  Maybe you can tell me here
> what alternative will "cut it" over the Cursor?  The case of reifying
> a proxy in a Smalltalk image to its real-object counterpart in a DB.
> This is something that happens about 100 times per minute depending on
> many factors.  Flipping the cursor provides a visual, real-time way to
> understand, not only the frequency of proxy hits, but also the rate
> which each hit is reifying.  A progress would not provide this
> information, nor would it be appropriate to popping up 100 progress
> bars per minute..  What else, then?

Some on-screen widget. Perhaps a little counter, "12345 Hz" in the 
corner of the screen or spatially localised to whereever the user 
interface representing the rest of the metainformation about the 
database is.

Using Cursor is fine up until you consider that there may be more than 
one subsystem that wants to use Cursor at once. Perhaps there's one 
process reifying proxies as you describe, at the same time another is 
downloading a webpage. Which one should get to change the Cursor?

My answer to that question is "mu."

Cheers,
   Tony