[squeak-dev] Is Morphic 'frozen'?

> My concern is not about fixing bugs or supporting it in general but
> about moving forward.
>
> Lately, Gary Chambers added new feature to his UI Enhancements package
> to support a different kinds of fill styles (through subclassing a
> FillStyle).
> And after overlooking the changes/extensions it gives me a feeling
> that there is an big need in refactoring in Morphic to support this
> nice feature, instead of dealing with workarounds.
>
> Who in charge there? Who is deciding what is good and what is bad?
> And how such things (like better and more flexible FillStyles) or any
> other improvements can find a way to make them appear in Morphic?
> Being more than a year with squeak community i didn't saw any
> noticeable movement around improvement Morphic/UI except Gary's work.

> On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 06:06:54AM +0200, Igor Stasenko wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> forgive me for my ignorance, i'm just want to know the current state
>> of Morphic package and it's destiny.
>
> Morphic has been without a maintainer or a leader for a while.
> Currently, there are three people/projects trying to improve
> that situation:
> - Gary Chambers has been making add-on improvements to Morphic
>  as part of his day-job at Pinesoft, and a lot of people like
>  them
> - Bert and Yoshiki are maintaining Morphic so that eToys
>  continues to be a useful system for kids. They did some core
>  changes to Morphic to support nice zooming and more mouse
>  cursors as part of OLPC EToys
> - Edgar has done a project "Lladrillos" to modularize Morphic
>  the same way 3.9 modularized squeak
>
>> - is Morphic is 'frozen' by now?
>
> Yes. It has not had major improvements in a long time.
>
>> - is there are people who spending time improving/reviewing it?
>
> See above
>
>> My concern is not about fixing bugs or supporting it in general but
>> about moving forward.
>>
>> Lately, Gary Chambers added new feature to his UI Enhancements  
>> package
>> to support a different kinds of fill styles (through subclassing a
>> FillStyle).
>> And after overlooking the changes/extensions it gives me a feeling
>> that there is an big need in refactoring in Morphic to support this
>> nice feature, instead of dealing with workarounds.
>>
>> Who in charge there? Who is deciding what is good and what is bad?
>> And how such things (like better and more flexible FillStyles) or any
>> other improvements can find a way to make them appear in Morphic?
>> Being more than a year with squeak community i didn't saw any
>> noticeable movement around improvement Morphic/UI except Gary's work.
>
> Indeed. Gary is doing more for Morphic than has been done in a
> good while. I am sure he would make a great Morphic team leader
> should he choose to. He listens to requests and knows how to
> respond to them
>
> I think the steps toward being a successful leader in a project
> like squeak are something like this:
>
> 1. Make friends with the community at large
> 2. Find a group of people who care more than average about an
>   issue that you care about
> 3. Discuss ideas deeply with your group, and listen to the
>   community as well
> 4. Learn the skills of your group, and discuss what each of you
>   could do personally to fix your issue.
> 5. Write a plan
> 6. Share the plan with your friends
> 7. Start acting out the plan
>
> Gathering a group of friends, making plans, and acting on them
> take effort. But I think it is how one leads. The single most
> important thing, however, is communicating. If you are willing
> to make a big effort at communicating, you are probably a good
> leader, even if you aren't yet a good communicator.
> Communication takes practice; don't despair if you aren't great
> yet.
>
> --
> Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/
>

> I wish to see organized group of developers who want to maintain Morphic.
> It is not good that significant part of squeak is not maintained by anyone.
>
> I heard that some works are done/currently doing by different people
> in different projects. What is not happening, that we don't see such
> improvements in squeak release for a while. I think that if we would
> be better organized, then we could make much better progress in
> Morphic, rather than currently sparse people/groups making their own
> patches which is having small chances to be included in Morphic
> because there is no authority which can guide or approve such changes
> in Squeak release.
>
> Maybe it's time to discuss how we can consolidate and organize work
> around Morphic to make things happen and make them happen to everyone
> who using squeak?
>
> Oh, and please, don't take me wrong. I don't want discuss new next-gen
> framework for squeak, or any another existing frameworks as Tweak.
> Squeak release are based on Morphic. And while its so,  we need to
> maintain it's current framework instead of waiting for a miracle to
> happen when it will be replaced by another, more powerful / flexible
> e.t.c etc framework.
>
>
>  

> I wish to see organized group of developers who want to maintain  
> Morphic.
> It is not good that significant part of squeak is not maintained by  
> anyone.
>
> I heard that some works are done/currently doing by different people
> in different projects. What is not happening, that we don't see such
> improvements in squeak release for a while. I think that if we would
> be better organized, then we could make much better progress in
> Morphic, rather than currently sparse people/groups making their own
> patches which is having small chances to be included in Morphic
> because there is no authority which can guide or approve such changes
> in Squeak release.
>
> Maybe it's time to discuss how we can consolidate and organize work
> around Morphic to make things happen and make them happen to everyone
> who using squeak?
>
> Oh, and please, don't take me wrong. I don't want discuss new next-gen
> framework for squeak, or any another existing frameworks as Tweak.
> Squeak release are based on Morphic. And while its so,  we need to
> maintain it's current framework instead of waiting for a miracle to
> happen when it will be replaced by another, more powerful / flexible
> e.t.c etc framework.
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Igor Stasenko AKA sig.
>
>