[Ann] WxMorphic v.0.01alpha

[Rob Gayvert]

Steven Swerling wrote:

> Hi,
>
> As the subject says:
>
>   http://www.swerlingphoto.com/squeak/wxmorphic/WxMorphic.html
>
> Includes screenshot.
>
> Pretty stable. Windows only.
>
> Take it for a spin and let me know what happens.

Steve -- this is marvelous. It's amazing to see morphs and widgets 
working so well together. And it's remarkably stable, especially for a 
0.01alpha release ;)

Just a few comments and questions so far:

1. In 0.02, buttons in a WxMorphicWorldTestPresenter outside of the new 
demo window don't work. This worked fine in 0.01. It might have 
something to do with the 0.01->0.02 update.

2. The bouncing atoms demo reveals a limitation of the current wx event 
handling: a modal event loop is run entirely within wxWidgets, so 
there's no opportunity for any updates on the Smalltalk side. How big of 
an issue do you think this is?

3. The wxSqueak demo needs a couple of directories (rc and data) to 
function properly. Feel free to add these to your demo if you want.

4. How much Win32-specific code is there? Any idea how hard this will be 
to port to OS X or GTK?

5. The keyboard focus problem is tricky. I tried a quick modification of 
WxButtonMorph to see if a wxEvtSetFocus event could deflect focus back 
to the parent, but it didn't have any effect. We may have to look deeper 
into the wxWidgets internals here to find an answer.

6. The notion of halos on wxButtons is intriguing.. If this can be 
generalized to any wx widget, it may offer an almost trivial solution to 
some of the more difficult problems in creating a UI builder.

7. "Toggle Squeak Display on/off".   I think what you're after here is 
already available with Wx>>showSqueakWindow:. Also, the VM can be 
started with a -headless option; under Windows, this gives you a tray 
icon which can open the Squeak window.

.. Rob