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MathMorphs, MorphicWrappers and Spotter

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Torsten Bergmann

MathMorphs, MorphicWrappers and Spotter

Hi,

I remember (back from my Squeak days) there was MathMorphs project:

http://www.dm.uba.ar/MathMorphs/

It supported a nice feature called "Morphic Wrappers"

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/354

One could just hit a special key combination to get into "typing mode" without a
workspace. Then one could enter a Smalltalk expression like "EclipseMorph new" and
the result was displayed on the desk (as a morph). Even non-morphic expressions
were possible like returning a point: "1@2" and the displayed as visual morph.

It was also able to combine the resulting objects, for instance if you enter
"1" a morph with "1" was displayed on the desktop. When you then enter "2" you
get a morph with "2" on the desk. Now dragging "2" onto "1" displayed a spinning
"satellite" and by clicking on it the various possible options for message sends
with one arguments where shown like #+ or #@, ...

So essentially you dragged one object (like "2") onto the other one (like "1") and
the systems showed you how you could combine them with a message. The resulting
object (like the point "1@2" when selecting #@ message or "3" when you select #+)
was then again displayed visually on the desktop.

This was really nice to lively explain objects and messages to newbees and I wished
a port of such a feature would exist for Pharo.

I also wonder if it would make sense for Spotter to accept regular
Smalltalk expressions. Currently it does not.

I mean just open Spotter, enter "Transcript show: 'HelloWorld'" or any other
without having to open a workspace...

Any comments?

Thanks
T.

Tudor Girba-2

Re: MathMorphs, MorphicWrappers and Spotter

Hi,

Indeed, we are definitely interested in the use case of entering a quick expression. Actually, we played with this in Spotter and we even had an extension that did just that. The problem is that all processors run in one single thread, and sometimes an evaluation can be expensive and this led to funny situations. But, it would be interesting if someone could find a solution that is fast and reliable enough.

Cheers,

Doru

On Mon, Jun 29, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Torsten Bergmann <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

I remember (back from my Squeak days) there was MathMorphs project:

http://www.dm.uba.ar/MathMorphs/

It supported a nice feature called "Morphic Wrappers"

http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/354

One could just hit a special key combination to get into "typing mode" without a
workspace. Then one could enter a Smalltalk expression like "EclipseMorph new" and
the result was displayed on the desk (as a morph). Even non-morphic expressions
were possible like returning a point: "1@2" and the displayed as visual morph.

It was also able to combine the resulting objects, for instance if you enter
"1" a morph with "1" was displayed on the desktop. When you then enter "2" you
get a morph with "2" on the desk. Now dragging "2" onto "1" displayed a spinning
"satellite" and by clicking on it the various possible options for message sends
with one arguments where shown like #+ or #@, ...

So essentially you dragged one object (like "2") onto the other one (like "1") and
the systems showed you how you could combine them with a message. The resulting
object (like the point "1@2" when selecting #@ message or "3" when you select #+)
was then again displayed visually on the desktop.

This was really nice to lively explain objects and messages to newbees and I wished
a port of such a feature would exist for Pharo.

I also wonder if it would make sense for Spotter to accept regular
Smalltalk expressions. Currently it does not.

I mean just open Spotter, enter "Transcript show: 'HelloWorld'" or any other
without having to open a workspace...

Any comments?

Thanks
T.

www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"