The layout of morphs in Cuis Smalltalk is different from the way it is done in Squeak.
There is a class LayoutMorph.
It represents a row or column of widgets or morphs. It does layout the submorphs by placing them either horizontally or vertically.
A LayoutSpec might be attached to any of the submorphs. If there are none attached, then, for a column, the column width is taken as the width, and any morph height is kept.
The same for rows: the submorph width is maintained, and submorph height would be made equal to row height.
So LayoutSpecs are the basis for the layout mechanism. Any Morph can be given a LayoutSpec, but in order to honor it, its owner must be a LayoutMorph.
A LayoutSpec specifies how a morph wants to be layed out. It can specify either a fixed width or a fraction of some available owner width. Same goes for height. If a fraction is specified, a minimum extent is also possible.
In Squeak the layout is specified completely by a LayoutPolicy (e.g. the TableLayout subclass) object which is attached to the container morph. Any morph may act as a container morph if such a layout policy object is attached.