My needs are far more modest: I have a number of records, and I want
to display them such that the fields in the records line up. If I was
using HTML, I'd just use a <table> tag.

Currently ArchiveViewer uses spaces and a monospaced font to make
things line up, which is... unsatisfactory in a GUI. So what I want is
a Spec that says "this thing is like a List but its contents are
records, and the records' parts will line up".

frank

On 16 July 2013 12:13, Casey Ransberger <casey.obrien.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> So this is actually something I really feel is missing.
>
> TableMorph. We still don't have a spreadsheet, in spite of the fact that people of note have pointed out that one of the most powerful spreadsheets ever written (Analyst) was written in Smalltalk.
>
> I needed a table view awhile back (not a whole spreadsheet, just a simple table view) and went at it myself. Maybe I'm just not terribly good with Morphic, but this turned out to be rather more challenging/time-consuming than I expected. It was difficult to get the morphs to behave. Eventually I had something that worked for my purpose but wasn't general at all.
>
> As usual, I was distracted by something shiny and forgot about it.
>
> So a lot of people told me, when I asked about spreadsheets (this was farther back by around six months,) to look at Skeleton. At the time (when I didn't know Smalltalk) I wasn't able to file it in successfully and gave up, hoping I'd make sense of it later.
>
> Anyway the reason I'm bringing it up is: if Skeleton was ever able to provide anything like a spreadsheet view, the logic for a usable table layout must have been in there somewhere. I think it may have code that does it, but it would need to be decoupled from the spreadsheet logic.
>
> Or you could just implement it from scratch. It just doesn't seem a terribly fun problem to slog through does it? Hopefully we'll have a simple general table layout that's easy to use in Morphic at some point.
>
> Do let us know if you find/invent something that works, this is so common a thread that if we were usenet and not mailman, it would be in the FAQ by now.
>
> On Jul 16, 2013, at 3:01 AM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I know! I just didn't want to have to write it! :)
>>
>> frank
>>
>> On 16 July 2013 10:41, H. Hirzel <hannes.hirzel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> To have a PluggableTableSpec  would be great!
>>>
>>> --Hannes
>>>
>>> On 7/15/13, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Cool. So it sounds like there's something for Morphic, even if we
>>>> don't have a PluggableTableSpec or similar, for ToolBuilder.
>>>>
>>>> frank
>>>>
>>>> On 15 July 2013 19:50, Chris Cunningham <cunningham.cb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Not a default widget, but I've been using a table widget called
>>>>> MutliColumnListMorph.  It is row oriented unlike most of the others -
>>>>> which
>>>>> should fit into the Archive veiwer nicely.
>>>>> http://www.squeaksource.com/MutliColumnListMorph.html
>>>>> It is pretty heavy-weight, though.  Lots of features that I like
>>>>> supported
>>>>> added as desired.
>>>>> And definitely not part of standard Trunk today.  No reason not to be,
>>>>> though.
>>>>> And definitely not in the ToolBuilder today, either.
>>>>>
>>>>> -Chris
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 12:13 PM, Frank Shearar <frank.shearar at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm converting ArchiveViewer to use ToolBuilder to build its UI,
>>>>>> rather than be a SystemWindow. ArchiveView simulates a table layout by
>>>>>> using plain text and a monospaced font.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Does anyone have something like a PluggableTableSpec class lying
>>>>>> around? Or suggestions on how to simulate a table with the existing
>>>>>> widgets?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Doing this conversion removes a whole bunch of threads from the
>>>>>> Tools->Morphic dependency.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> frank
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>