> On 2020-06-26, at 9:35 AM, Robert Withers via Squeak-dev <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> Is there a way to set Squeak to be dual screen?

The fundamentals have been there since 2004. HostWindowPlugin/DisplayHostWindow provide some breadcrumbs.

After years of people shrieking loudly (oh, so loudly) about how essential host windows and native controls are to any chance of Smalltalk having a future - nothing. Nobody found it worth the effort to take the foundation and build on it. That was over 15 years ago.

VisualWorks did the native window thing a long time ago. I've been having to use VW a bit recently (see recent email whining about the awful font stuff) and I really, really, don't like having separate host windows. I think part of the problem is that I tend to have a *lot* of windows open and it turns out that none of the current main OS (yes, I've been using Windows, Mac & various unix) handle lots of windows at all well. It's much easier to have my Squeak world nicely tied together.

One place where I could see potential for interesting experiments would be to use the nascent DisplayHostWindow stuff to do exactly this dual display thing - hell, lots of displays if you want, why not? Instead of trying to make every host window a separate Squeak window, make each a Display and then it you want to spread a couple across several physical display, go for it. Maybe hanging it all off the idea of Projects would be a good start? A Project window already gathers groups of windows after all.

And of course, I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that someone has already done this and that I simply don't remember it...


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.