Göran, all,

Göran's approval endorsement means a lot to me, no offense to anyone else.  EToys strikes me as something better existing on top of rather than in morphic.  Much of what Juan proposes make sense, and I really like the idea of having powerful transformations ready to compose and use.

I strongly disagree with the idea of removing pixels; make them basic/prim/whatever, but removing the most basic element of graphics needlessly bold IMHO (see comment re PDA and other small machines below).

Making morphs zoom/scale is GREAT.  They must also be resizeable.  Both of these shape changes are useful.

Floats are great, but I think that much of the GUI can and should be rendered with integer arithmetic.  Some scalings could be established in physical vs. logical dimensions, and once that filters into the remainder of the calculation, floats will appear everywhere; Smalltalk's usual dynamic nature should take over.  With some work, it could probably be made to be efficient and flexible, with the cost of flexibility being voluntary.  With that said, I will admit to creating a very complex user interface with most things specified in floating point inches.  Still, I do not think we should force that on PDAs etc. that might not have the FLOPS of a 3GHz desktop machine.  Integers have their uses.

Bill


Göran (much snipped):
Since it feels that we are getting more concrete here I decided to
rename the subject. Perhaps people join up in the discussion again. :)


Though I am just one of "us" you know. :) But yes, it is nice to feel
that people agree - and as I said I am all with you for three major
reasons:

1. You are a doer. You have already proved that.
2. You are committed to this. We don't have many people committed to
Morphic development (on this low level) these days and I value each and
every one highly.
3. You have a plan.

And my principle is that if someone is itching to improve something and
has the above 3 things, then there is not much to argue about - I say
go. :)




Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bills at anest4.anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029