Mark Guzdial wrote:

>The problem I'm more interested in is what it means to have "multiple
>applications" in a Morphic world.  How do I support people who want to run
>BOTH the JukeBox, and the SqueakPages browser?  My current thinking is to
>distribute the SAME image, just with different morphs open.  Then, when
>they ask, I teach them how to open up new morphs, and use that as a lead-in
>to programming their own space.

But what will you do if you want to deliver a third application two months
later?  Redistribute a new image which now contains all three applications?
 What's if another person wants to add a similar application that should
run together with the JukeBox application?

I'm afraid this easy solution doesn't scale well.  It might be well suited
for your approach but in general there might be a better solution.  And
IMHO the solution could be again "modules."  If you prepare a base image
which will scan a directory for "application modules" and automatically
load them on startup, you're done.  All you'd need is a concept of binary
modules that can be loaded into an image, similar to VisualWorks parcels.

If you add name spaces, even other people can add their applications to
your base image without (well, probably not "any" but at least "much")
problems.  Otherwise, you might run into deep trouble as you both define
the same classes or extend the same base classes with different methods
with the same name.


bye
--
Stefan Matthias Aust  //  ...and now something completely different