Re: Scrollbar morphems?

[Bay.Chang@Eng.Sun.COM (Bay-Wei Chang)]

> The other problem is that after you edited a method and before you
> accepted it ( or canceled ) the on screen image is inconsistent with
> what the object is really like. An alternative that I had considered
> was that the system would give you a clone of the method source that
> you could edit at your leisure. To update the original method, you
> would drag-and-drop the text on the slot. The problem with this is
> that it is much less convenient and also very dangerous - you might
> drop the text on the wrong method by mistake!

Method editing in the previous Self user interface ("ui1") actually
did not suffer from this "counterfactuality."  The editor would appear
below the object, and only when the accept button was clicked did the
method code in the slot change.

While this preserves "factuality," it feels much less direct than
editing within the slot, as you can do in the Self 4.0 interface
("ui2").

An interesting variant was tried by a student of Craig
Chambers' a few years ago.  She extended ui1 to browse and edit Cecil
objects.  Initiating an edit of a method would cause an editor to
appear precisely in front of the existing method.  It is as if you are
editing the code directly within the slot.  Only if you moved the
editor aside could you see that the actual slot was below it.
Otherwise, the entire edit and accept took place without alerting you
to the fact of the temporary intrusion of the separate editor.

A clever solution (though a little too sneaky for my tastes).

Bay