FFI questions

Stephen Pair spair at advantive.com
Fri Jun 16 12:01:29 UTC 2000


> Squeak is and should be a platform of itself - so it should have
> an own and
> single look and feel, like Java has Swing.
> We should use FFI to get fast drawing access and to wrap the platforms
> differences
> in common classes.

So why don't we just emulate the Java Swing look and feel?  Since Sun is
trying to make that an accepted UI across many (well several anyway)
platforms, it would make the acceptance of the Squeak version that much less
of an issue.  It should also be very easy to do...we could divide up the
various widgets...you take windows...I'll take push buttons, etc.  I did a
Win2k like push button once and the implementation was trivial...and Swing
is very well documented.

Besides, the traditional UI standards only cover a small part of what you
can actually accomplish with Morphic UIs...thus, making Squeak windows, push
buttons and menus look and act like Swing shouldn't be all that traumatic to
people, should it?  There's really only one thing I don't like about Swing
and that's the draggable areas (identified with those little dots).  But,
I'd be willing to live with that.

I guess the real question is:  How important is it to give Squeak it's own,
identifiable, look and feel?  And, if it is that important, who is going to
come up with the standard, document it, get approval from everyone,
implement it, etc.

- Stephen





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