On Sun, Nov 21, 1999 at 08:37:23AM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
> This is now -- IMO -- a very pressing need. Please contribute ideas.

The system should provide a very simple way of understanding and 
changing everything a user encounters. It's a bit hard to describe, but
it should be possible to simply point to something on the screen and say 
"I want to change THIS".

To some extent this is allready possible, here are two examples:

1) Bring up the World-Menu. "keep this menu up". 
   shift-click on an item (but not "dismiss ;-)).
   Now the String of the MenuItem is editable. 
   

3) X Window under UNIX is often configured to bring
   a window to the front when the mouse is over it. 
   (Focus-follows-mouse with auto-rise). 
   Maybe that would be cool to have in Squeak, too?
   Just do it: bring up the halo for a SystemWindow, 
   "Browse Class", add these two methods:
    
    handlesMouseOver: evt
  	^ true

    mouseEnter: evt
	^ self activate.


These are examples for changes on differnt meta levels: the change
of the worlmenu only changes this single menu, a fresh instance is
like the old. This is the lowest "meta" level (and thus not "meta" 
at all ;-), whereas the auto rise patch is a change on a real meta-level:
It affects  *all* Systemwindows immediatly -- metalevel changes are 
very powerfull. Higher metalevels would be "all Morphs" or even 
"all Objects".  

But there are levels between the non-meta-level and the change at
class-level, and there squeak does have some problems. Of course it
is possible to change everything, but these levels are not explicit 
and thus it is very difficult to find the right place where to do the 
change. 

For example, I would like to have the menu item changed in every 
word-menu. Hmm... Somehow this should be equally easy to do? 
But it is not: The world menu is an instance of MenuMorph that
was built somehow by some other class. And we have no way to
figure out which class this was. Of course we can search for it.
(It's HandMorph). But the MenuMorph instance itself does not know 
where and how it was built... 

It should be somehow more explicit: We need some kind of "meta-instance"
that discribes how a particular instance was put together.  


   Marcus

---
Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de phone at home:(0721)614235 @work:(0721)608-2749 
Imitating paper on a computer screen is like tearing the wings off a 747 and 
using it as a bus on the highway. -- Ted Nelson