Morphic - The Squeak User Interface
by Juan Manuel Vuletich
Classic Morphic Programming
Named and
shortly described by Squeak Central (then "The Squeak Team") in
"Programming in Morphic".
"This is
the kind of programming for which Morphic was originally designed, and
excellent examples of clean and attractive style using that approach can be
found, for example, in BookPageSorterMorph and EnvelopeEditorMorph.
In
"Classic Morphic Programming" style, you define your own subclasses
of one or more generic Morph classes, and blend them into a working subsystem. Here,
you're directly extending Morphic, in grand and time-honored Smalltalk manner. The
fundamental tool here is the Browser: you locate and familiarize yourself with
particular Morphic classes, and you then subclass the ones that you decide are
appropriate for your application.
Most current
Squeak users will prefer this traditional, mature, analytic, browser-based
Smalltalk approach."
This is traditional
Smalltalk programming, creating and modifying classes in a Smalltalk browser. The
examples given in the introduction fall into this style. At this moment, it is
the most effective way to develop applications. By applications I mean morphs
that can be reused and maintained, useful for building end-user programs. It is
also the most familiar way to a Smalltalk programmer. A basic tutorial by John
Maloney is "Tutorial: Fun with the Morphic
Graphics System".
I will write one based on my Scrabble Game. You can download and study it, but
the complete tutorial is not written yet.