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Upcoming Smalltalk release: add to you setup files
- To: <xtech@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Subject: Upcoming Smalltalk release: add to you setup files
- From: Mark S. Miller <vlad!mark>
- Date: Wed, 25 Jul 90 22:38:54 PDT
I've added two bits of optional behavior to the Smalltalk system which
you'll all be getting as of the next release. As we will each have
our own tastes on these matters, we should put our own settings into
our Smalltalk setup files so we can painlessly have it our way when we
get an image from someone else.
Gridded positioning of windows & icons:
To effectively turn this feature off, say
InputSensor grid: 1@1.
In my setup file for vlad, I say
InputSensor grid: 16@16.
On evilotto (which has more & smaller pixels), I will say
InputSensor grid: 32@32.
On an individual positioning, the feature is disabled while you hold
down the leftShift key. (There's no reason to choose powers of 2, I
just like round numbers.)
Abbreviated menus:
To turn this feature off, say
PopUpMenu shortForm: false.
I say
PopUpMenu shortForm: true.
Which hides menu items (such as cut\copy\paste) for which there are
more convenient equivalents, or which seemed completely useless. The
menus were just getting too large for my taste. Unfortunately,
switching this doesn't affect the window (blue button) menus for
windows which already exist. After switching, if you want all window
to have the same blue button menu, close the ones you've got & open
new ones.
Note: I've tried to reform (make more consistent, simple, and useful)
the menu organizations some. However, as this really deals with
unresolvable matters of taste, please react calmly. (If absolutely
necessary, I think I know how we can have otherwise unresolvable menu
disputes be resolved by doing personal customization in setup files,
but there be problems with this...) Though there is no menu
organization everyone will like, a menu organization which is designed
to be liked may be hated by fewer than one which has grown randomly.
(Sorry about this MarcS) The menu system has also changed internally
so that it should be significantly easier to extend & improve.
Virtually all literal menus (non calculated) are now hierarchical
menus made from menu description strings and sharing a single caching
mechanism (instead of having all those silly class variables scattered
all over the universe). Enjoy.