744: Mainline

You can develop an extremely fancy GUI using Smalltalk, but when you develop an extremely fancy GUI, the createViews method defined for the view manager grows complex in proportion:

• The createViews method requires program fragments for each graphical element. You must supply all such fragments.
• Each graphical element supports a collection of clicked events. You must specify the events that your application is to recognize, along with the names of the responding callback methods.
• Each graphical element requires a message specification of where it is to appear in the application window. You must write complex specifications if you want to include information about how the graphical element is to move and shrink or grow as the surrounding window shrinks or grows.
• Your application may require a menu bar. You must write a complex specification for that menu bar inside the createViews method if the menu has many elements, particularly if there are many submenus.

All these facts ensure that the definition of createViews for complex applications will be tedious and error prone.

The facts also ensure that changes will be difficult and time consuming.