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What the heck is a GeeMailMorph?
Last updated at 12:45 am UTC on 17 January 2006
Posted to the squeak-dev list by Alan Kay on 2/13/2002
Added to the Swiki by Brent Vukmer on 2/13/2002
Reviewed by: Richard A. O'Keefe

Examples:
  1. Alan's Geemail example Project (Squeak 3.4)
  2. Beginner's Tutorial for Geemail

This was one of several nifty projects that Bob Arning did with us. Ironically, this was a documentation idea – originally for explaining ideas through Squeak emails (hence the name).

The idea is to make a scrolling galley object that can do both text and "do the right thing" with embedded objects. The usual way I use it is to have the Geemail object be twice as wide or so as the interior text object. Then I start writing some explanation (say) to one of our teachers. As I write my way down the galley, I can put other objects, including working objects, either in the text (by dropping) or in the right margin (by dropping). Bob has it set up so that drops acquire anchors in the text so they will stay where they should stay even if modifications to the text are made upstream.

Scott Wallace made an object that is a little etoy world called "Scripting" (found in the Widgets flap) that is a little namespace environment so you can show sequences of etoys.

Bob shows where the page breaks will be if you print, and there are options in the Geemails menu (above the scroll bar) to force the galley into columns, etc.)

This didn't get done all the way because of the exit from Disney, but I still think it's a good idea to have a way to provide multimedia Squeak explanations via email – I would be using it now to demonstrate itself, for example.

I've enclosed this email as a Squeak project showing the Geemail and also put it on BobsSuperSwiki. (Actually this enclosure got bounced by the Squeak list because it was 30K too large, so look for it on BSS)

Cheers,

Alan