Stephane Ducasse wrote:

> I would not do this change. I imagine that we should
find a much clever
> way of notifying user. Avi suggested to me that we
could have exception
> that would be caught and letting the used decide if
he wants to put a UI or not
> for headless image for examples.

Tim Rowledge then wrote:

>  The key item to separate progress notification from
>  needing the UI
>  classes is to change the defaultAction to do
nothing
>  rather than display
>  the progress bar (well, modulo the stuff to make
sure
>  the block runs
>  etc). Then one has to find all the place where the
>  exception could need
>  to be handled (which is actually pretty tricky and
>  tedious - tools
>  would be good here) and handle it the right way.

Avi Bryant wrote:

>The only way to do it right is per process, and the
cleanest way to do
>that is probably to do exactly what Tim suggests,
which is to have a
>Notification subclass signalled for each type of user
interaction -
>#inform:, #confirm:, progress, etc.

First, I should note up front that I'm new to Squeak
and don't know much about it's inner workings so
please feel free to ignore my opinion.

Wasn't the concepts behind MVC suppose to be about the
separation of the interface and the model? By the way,
I realize that Morphic isn't MVC (I'm speaking of the
motivations initially behind Smalltalk's MVC at a
conceptual level). Also, I have read somewhere that
MVC originally had 4 elements Model, View, Controller
and User. Of which User being the consideration of
whom is the end user and their needs.

Many people seem to think of View and Controller being
some sort of GUI elements but originally was not this
concept meant to be whatever mechanisms were
appropriate to the end user? 

For instance, people with handicaps may have different
needs in how they control or view the computer. A
quadriplegic cannot control the computer with a mouse
or keyboard and a person with a visual disability will
have difficulties with a "View" which is a Graphical
UI.

Also, what if someone is perfectly able visually but
doesn't need a GUI? Like perhaps if they desired to
run Squeak as a server? In such cases perhaps the
"view" they would want would be a record of some sort
on how long certain time consuming operations took.
Perhaps, in order to keep tabs on performance or to
monitor regular occurring events such as how long
periodic backups took. e.g.-perhaps in the form of
some kind of log file (either saved inside the image,
on disk or to be part of a summary of notable
activities emailed out on a regular basis)? They may
not even wish to have Progress dialog windows
popping-up at all. 

Again, what about people who are blind? Obviously, a
GUI progress bar is rather useless to them and would
be in need of some other form of progress notification
other than visual. i.e.- a different form of "View".

I think the key words here are notification ... of
progress.

Maybe messages intended for View like things should be
sent to a collection of Observers? Observers of
pertinence who can be attached or removed from the
notification mechanism. (i.e.- as in GoF Observer
pattern or similar). Observers who respond in a way
appropriate to the needs of the end User.

Just a thought which came to mind.

Take care,

Anthony

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