[squeak-dev] dynamic FileDialog pop-ups considered harmful

K K Subbu kksubbu.ml at gmail.com
Mon Dec 30 06:49:47 UTC 2019


On 30/12/19 7:27 AM, Jakob Reschke wrote:
> Drop places in Squeak that represent external locations or services 
> might be nice, yes. Although still somewhat peculiar because 1) it is 
> not the way people are used to from other, non-Squeak applications; and

Squeak already reifies host resources like Clipboard in System-Support 
this way. Adding a folder proxy will make Squeak UI consistent with such 
objects.

> 2) why not interact with the real outside object instead of the proxy... 
> but better than nothing as long as integration does not reach or work 
> that far. Again my impression is that this would be Squeak pretending to 
> be the OS/window manager/viewport to your whole machine, which it 
> actually is not in most setups.

A host folder is "outside" Squeak and needs a proxy to reify it. The OP 
is on how to avoid having to browse the entire tree of folders when all 
one wants to do is store or retrieve files from a few folders.

Squeak is a virtual machine hosted on an OS. Folders are objects 
controlled by the host, so it makes sense to send a message to 
store/retrieve files through proxies rather than reproduce an entire 
file navigation implementation into Squeak.

> Note that these drop places or listing morphs may further contribute to 
> screen clutter and real estate scarceness, which a modal dialog 
> circumvents.

The clutter problem is a different one from the problem OP raised. It 
applies for any window not just open folders. Squeak already has 
patterns to reduce clutter. A folder proxy could be a Flap or 
ProjectViewMorph that accepts accepts dropped objects without opening.

Regards .. Subbu


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