Hi, Richard,

At 12:42 PM +1200 4/19/01, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
>Issue 1.  Why are the "iconic" handles and the "classic" handles
>in different places?  That's really confusing...

"Classic" handles derive from the old solid-circle halo handles that 
were the original form used in morphic starting in 1997.

A number of users said that they wanted further visual cues to help 
them remember the functions of the handles.  We had originally 
thought that the combination of color, relative location, and balloon 
help would be sufficient, but there was enough clamor on the list 
that we instituted a variant form of halo handles that had icons 
within the circles.  The icons we ended up adopting were primarily 
ones created by Bert Freudenberg.  When we cut over to "iconic" halos 
as the default, we used the opportunity also to tweak positions 
somewhat.

The "classic" handles survive as an option in the system only because 
we didn't want to pull the rug out from under users who had bonded to 
them.  As such, we did not want to change their positions.

The "Simple halos" were a once-off experiment requested by Alan a 
couple of years ago.  The idea was to have a very small number of 
quite large handles, each with suggestive graphics, which included an 
"escape" that allowed the user to bring up a full set of handles when 
desired.  In this experiment, we were targeting quite young children, 
so consistency with the "professional programmers' system" was never 
an issue.  With much larger graphics and without other handles to 
share the real-estate, there were clearly very different constraints 
and goals at play here.

My sense is that essentially everyone in Squeakdom uses the iconic 
handles nowadays -- everyone who uses halos at all, that is -- and 
consequently we've been considering completely ripping out all 
support for both of the other kinds.  I'd be interested in hearing 
from anyone who *does* use "classic" or "simple" halos, or who feels 
they should be retained.

In place of the "classic" handles, perhaps we would substitute a 
"plain" handles variant, which would consist of precisely the same 
handles as the "iconic" handles, in precisely the same positions, but 
would omit the icons.  I think this is probably what you (Richard) 
were (reasonably) expecting of the "classic" handles in your comment 
above.  I wonder if anyone would use such "plain" handles if we 
offered them, or whether we would be better advised to slim down to 
one kind of halo handle.

Incidentally, it was recently pointed out to me that the "more 
handles" handle on the "simple" halos no longer works.  This is 
probably something that got broken during the morphic event work last 
October.  It's presumably not worth fixing if we're going to rip out 
"simple" halos altogether.

The architecture already in place in support the existing 
halo-appearance variants presumably would stand us in good stead at 
such time as anyone wanted to implement new variants, such as the 
"Letter in a Circle" form.



>Issue 2.  Shortly after setting the preference to "simple" handles
>and trying them out, Squeak locked up, and a MacOS box appeared in
>the middle of the screen, the text disappearing before I could read it.
>The CD continued to play, but nothing else worked, so I'm rebooting now.

Has anyone else seen this?  Perhaps it was coincidental?  Richard, 
can you reproduce this problem?  If so, please send details privately 
to me.  However, this is another case where the need for a fix -- if 
indeed there is a bug here -- will likely be obviated by removal of 
the overall "simple halos" feature.

   -- Scott