On 14 Mar 2002, Martin Drautzburg wrote:

> Bert Freudenberg <bert at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de> writes:
> 
> > That's called a Workspace in Squeak. Open it from the world menu or the 
> > right flap.
> 
> Thanks, I wasn't aware of the fact that you don't have to highlight
> before pressing Alt-D. But how could I read user Input from the
> Workspace, other than commands. I mean something like 
> login: 
> password:
> 

You can write your own commands that take parameters:

Create a class DrautzburgUtilities with some class methods.

Then you can call these methods froma workspace with

   DrautzburgUtilities myFirstMethodForUser: 'Martin' password: 'Rhein'.


In Smalltalk terminology a message send consists of a selector and
arguments.

In the example 
#myFirstMethodForUser:password:

is the selector, while

'Martin' and 'Rhein' 

are the parameters.


Within the method you can do your things. Using class side methods
results in having a singleton.

With this approach you can build a up a text based user interface 
in no time:

Just have a workspace open with some command in it - click at the line you
are interested in and hit ALT-D. This works similar to Oberon. (Well
actually Wirth copied the concept from Smalltalk).

Various GUI oriented approaches are possible as well, but need more time.


Cheers
Hannes Hirzel