[UI] C# methodologies

Mon Jan 14 20:23:22 UTC 2008

Jason,

I probably did misunderstand you.  Dolphin's ViewComposer does some of
what you describe, but I suspect that Object Arts would be the first to
agree that it could be done better.  It might be interesting to look at
WindowBuilder (if we can find a copy of Smalltalk Express or something
else that has it and then get it to run), Dolphin Community Edition, and
Squeak/Morphic.  I think the correct solution merges a code generator
with a visual editor, the nature of which might change with the views
(e.g. Morphic, wx, etc.).  I have long done the code and view generator
in a "batch" mode to generate GUIs based on various meta data sources. 
There is a Dolphin solution that approaches it from the view, IIRC,
generating code to match it.  I should dig around for it and add it to
our list of examples.  Throw anything else you want in with it, stir,
and plan a GUI editor.  Is that closer?  BTW, just because I advocate
against volatile changes to the language, please do not feel like we
have to stick to ST-80.  I would very much like to see Squeak more fully
embrace exception handling, as well as provide shortcuts to avoid the
overhead (such as using #at:ifAbsent: vs. having to catch errors from
#at:). Squeak does it in some places and not others.  If you want to
call that "Smalltalk 95" or so, I'd let you get away with it.  Dolphin
and VW do some related things quite wel, and IMHO, Squeak should "learn"
from them.