[UI] C# methodologies

[Jason Johnson]

Hi Bill,

I think you misunderstand me a little.  What I propose (are more
accurately; what I'm toying around with) does not require anymore VM
support then Morphic has now, perhaps not as much (I don't know what,
if anything it has).  And certainly no changes to the language.  What
I was talking about with graphic objects behaving differently
depending off they are designed or not doesn't need extra VM support:
the Graphic designer or RAD system is an application that simply
happens to run widgets inside itself (one could think of it as
emulated and indeed that might be the easiest way to implement it) and
modifies how events appear to the applications running under it.  Once
the applications are "in the wild" they get the events directly from
the "world" or what ever system is in place.

I don't know much about Tweak and I didn't know they had a compiler.
What I have seen is that they use what C# calls attributes to signal
what events a method handles.  If those attributes work the same way
in Smalltalk as they do in C#, then I would expect this to be
potentially less efficient [1] but I would have to see how it actually
works.

So just to re-iterate:  I don't want to change Smalltalk in anyway nor
do any VM hacking.  I'm simply pondering how far one could go with an
application that happens to be for building GUI applications (written
in stock Smalltalk-80 of course).

[1] In C# the [attributes] are just meta data that gets attached to
whatever it references.  To make use of this meta data one would have
to query the entity (e.g. method, class, interface, whatever) to see
what attributes it has.  Because of this they are most useful for
design time.

On Jan 14, 2008 2:48 PM, Bill Schwab <BSchwab at anest.ufl.edu> wrote:
> Jason,
>
> I need to read this more carefully later.  My gut reaction is that it
> is a nice idea, but that I would not modify the VM or language over it.
> Morphic has used extensions for a long time.  I have *no* objection to
> graphical tools that notice and utilize such things.  I draw the line at
> things like the Tweak compiler; it makes about as much sense to me as
> building Squeak's underscore dependence into the compiler and sources -
> an optional editor feature (bug to some) becomes a major headache for
> cross-dialect compatibility.
>
> Dolphin was always going to grow something like what I think you have
> in mind, but it has yet to materialize.  I have some automated view and
> code generation tools, and they have been helpful in various situations.
>  Unless there is a huge reason to do otherwise, I recommend writing
> productivity tools *in* Smalltalk, not *into* Smalltalk.  That way, one
> preserves the concept of an integrated system with a simple language and
> ever more advanced tools, all built the same way.
>
> Bill
>
>
>
> Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
> University of Florida
> Department of Anesthesiology
> PO Box 100254
> Gainesville, FL 32610-0254
>
> Email: bschwab at anest.ufl.edu
> Tel: (352) 846-1285
> FAX: (352) 392-7029
>
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