Geometric Components

Class: ArcMorph, RectangleMorph, ...
Spec Class: ArcMorphSpec, RectangleMorphSpec, ...

These components are lightweight elements in a GUI; they are not derived from the View class, but instead from the much more lightweight VisualPart hierarchy. This means, that they do not create a true window in the graphic system. Instead, these are drawn and handled by their container.

Being non-Views, these cannot be identified as separate objects from the outside. This affects any event recorder or window-tree exploring tools (external to Smalltalk).

Also, these are drawn into the containing view, instead of having their own view. This means, that they are always clipped by any view which lies inside such a components area. These components cannot be made to cover any other view.

All of these components behave similar; their look can be controlled either by providing static values for the colors and attributes, or by providing them dynamically through channels (i.e. valueHolders as provided by aspect methods from the application).

The Basics Section:

ID	Unique symbolic name (ID) of the box. This ID can be used by the application to access the widget via `"builder>>componentAt:#ID"`.
Line	Controls if a frame-line is to be drawn with the line-color.
Line Color	The line-color (if line is true).
Line Width	The line-width (if line is true).
Line Style	The line-style (if line is true). If provided via a channel, the value must be one of the symbols: #solid, #dashed or #dotted
Fill	Controls if the object should be filled with the fill-color
Fill Color	The fill-color (if fill is true).

The Morph Section:

Defines aspect selectors for all of the previous attributes. Thus, an application can control any of the above attribute dynamically via a valueHolder.

The Help Section:

see document "Using the Help Tool"

The Layout Section:

see document "The Layout of the Widgets"