[ANN] Styled Text Editor for Cuis 4.0 Smalltalk

Am 23.04.2012 um 12:25 schrieb Janko Mivšek:
It doesn't really matter who started it. We all like to come over this. It can happen and the only thing making it worse is to talk about the fact that it happened.

Regarding the styled text editor it is highly bound to the changes that have been made to Cuis. So there is close to no chance to have a common codebase. It will be a fork anyway. And what I heard it will be a lot of work to adapt it anyway.

Norbert

Dne 23. 04. 2012 12:37, piše Sven Van Caekenberghe:
Well, this is prime example of how nowadays society in general ( not
just in our community) we are not able to react even to a bit
provocative observations with argument-only responses. Specially we as
technical profession should be able to stay on argumented debate even in
with emotions present.

Anyone remember the techniques of disputes in European medieval
universities? Then it was normal to be angry and emotional, but you
should "ride you own anger" to get an energy for as better as possible
disputing with your opponent, which mostly ends up with the best result.
Much better than with isolated effort, without such dispute and without
all the energy in emotions there. Emotions are therefore not to be
suppressed but canalized towards the better end!

> PS: (The qoute above is *not* what I think at all, about either Aida/Web or Seaside ;-)

I know I know :)

Best regards
Janko


--
Janko Mivšek
Aida/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si

On 04/23/2012 12:43 PM, Norbert Hartl wrote:
> It doesn't really matter who started it. We all like to come over this. It can happen and the only thing making it worse is to talk about the fact that it happened.

Yeah, I don't care either about who started it - I am just tired of it
:). We are all the same family, the both communities overlap a lot. For
example, what am I? Am I a Squeak-guy? Or a Pharo-guy? Or an Amber-guy?

> Regarding the styled text editor it is highly bound to the changes that have been made to Cuis. So there is close to no chance to have a common codebase. It will be a fork anyway. And what I heard it will be a lot of work to adapt it anyway.

Ok, then the "interesting aspect" is moot, or at least ... a different
question - who wants to port? :)

regards, Göran

Am 23.04.2012 um 13:27 schrieb Janko Mivšek:

Well, let me recap. Someone said something less polite. Another one responded in an equal unpolite way (that's two). Then there is talk about the one who said something (that's three). And a few steps after we already have global spanning theory of a problem (including all)?
I'm not sure if I just don't get it but it sounds like non-sense to me. At least I'm sure it adds nothing!

Norbert

> Hi folks!
>
> Having skimmed this thread I must say that I am amazed how easy we fall into Squeak vs Pharo flamewars - haven't we gotten past that by now?
>
> Now, the most interesting part is IMHO not discussed - how does the leadership of Pharo view this work? Is it meriting enough to be a blessed project for Pharo?

what are we talking about?
If somebody want to port this work to pharo he is more than welcome.


> Just curious because it does present an interesting case - an important part being primarily developed in *another* Smalltalk than Pharo (Cuis).

?
You are not talking about CUIS text editor?


> Just cloning it off into Pharo and forking seems... less optimal. Any ideas or thoughts?

I do not get what you mean. I just want to work on our roadmap and make it getting real.
It is hard enough to get some momentum and to deliver for real.
So can you help us to get focused?
People can do what they want. I wrote a vision document. We have a roadmap
and we will do it.



>
> regards, Göran
>

>> It doesn't really matter who started it. We all like to come over this. It can happen and the only thing making it worse is to talk about the fact that it happened.
>
> Yeah, I don't care either about who started it - I am just tired of it :).

May be other people are tired by other aspects?
No? I guess so.

We have a vision and people can help making it true or not. :)
But our goal is to support business emerge (with our little mean) but we try hard.

Stef

Hi!

On 04/23/2012 03:40 PM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:
>> Just cloning it off into Pharo and forking seems... less optimal. Any ideas or thoughts?
>
> I do not get what you mean. I just want to work on our roadmap and make it getting real.
> It is hard enough to get some momentum and to deliver for real.
> So can you help us to get focused?
> People can do what they want. I wrote a vision document. We have a roadmap
> and we will do it.

Ok, let me clarify. I was just wondering how the Pharo community wants
to handle a case where a substantial component (in this case, this new
editor) is not *primarily* developed in Pharo (in this case Cuis).

The simple route is to just copy and fork. But IMHO this doesn't
leverage the team already around this editor, right? We (Pharo) can't
just go around and forking everything and maintaining everything for
ourselves, right?

I just got interested in that problem - now, later replies indicated
that it would still need a substantial rewrite for Pharo, so perhaps the
situation I am describing is not really applicable in this case.

regards, Göran

Hey all!

On 04/23/2012 03:43 PM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:
>>> It doesn't really matter who started it. We all like to come over this. It can happen and the only thing making it worse is to talk about the fact that it happened.
>>
>> Yeah, I don't care either about who started it - I am just tired of it :).
>
> May be other people are tired by other aspects?
> No? I guess so.

I don't follow. What do you mean?

> We have a vision and people can help making it true or not. :)
> But our goal is to support business emerge (with our little mean) but we try hard.

I know and I am all behind it, 100%. The thing is, this "history" behind
the Squeak/Pharo divide is still lurking between the lines and I
(personally) am tired of it.

For example, I often get the feeling that my posts to this list raise
replies as if I am some kind of "outsider", just because I was heavily
involved in Squeak earlier or something.

I am a Pharoer too. I may be more of a bystander these days than a
contributor (since I don't have a lot of time to spend) - but I am only
using *Pharo* these days, not Squeak. Yup, sorry Squeak, but it is just
the reality. I *still* wish the best for Squeak though, and all other
open source or commercial efforts in the Smalltalk arena.

I think it would be nice if we all could be a little bit more positive
and inclusive, especially the people who are prominent in our
(overlapping) communities - you set the example. :)

I really don't see any gain in Pharo spewing negatives over Squeak,
Squeak is still the inheritage of Pharo and I for one am proud of the
friendliness of the Smalltalk community. Nor of course see I any gain in
spewing in the other direction, it goes both ways.

Now, I suspect this light criticism wrapped up in smileys and all, and
with all the good intentions, will still lead to negative replies. But I
hope not. Perhaps time to simply move on? ;)

regards, Göran

PS. I love all the momentum in Pharo right now, it all looks very good,
and I am itching digging into 1.4! Superb work.

>> Did your "Smalltalk Code Critic" tell you that or just another one of
>> your biased opinions?
>
> Wow, why so aggressive?

Not aggressive, just curious about what your point is Marcus?  What is
your point when you say something like, "isn't it amazing how bad
Squeak is?"  What does it mean when someone characterizes as "anarchy
that runs in circles?"  Or, another one I read recently on a blog
comment:  "Squeak is known to burn your eyes out.  You should try
Pharo!"  It's all non-specific, non-helpful, antagonistic, fuddy-duddy
nonsense.

I've been rooting for Pharo (still am) and supporting it by blemishing
my code on account of your whimsical renames, etc., so it will
continue to run there.  If you would lead a reciprocation of this sort
of good will rather than divisive idle-commentary, it could be more
productive.

> Do you really do *not* see the problems that there are in Squeak?

Of course I do, that's why I'm part of a group that's addressing them.
 I also happen to see problems with Pharo and some of the wrong
decisions that have been made, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go
out of my way to disparage your hard work.

>> -- even old versions from years past embarass programs
>> like, say, PowerPoint.  It's text-handling is fantastic -- remember
>> the release image delivered with text on the desktop flowing out one
>> text box, following along a loop-de-loop spline and into another text
>> box?  What other programs that can do that today in 2012..?
>>
> It's a toy example. Adding a character means re-flowing everything.
> Unusable for larger texts.

"Larger texts", a la gigantic Word documents from the 90's thru today?
 We should be moving toward smaller bits of linked-information anyway,
like what I've done with MaOffice for Squeak.  Anyway, it doesn't
matter -- you're right, it was just an example illustrating the
capability.

 - Chris

But this is not that simple since Cuis layout is different and juan changed a lot the code.
We are also cleaning morphic so there is no magic.

> I just got interested in that problem - now, later replies indicated that it would still need a substantial rewrite for Pharo, so perhaps the situation I am describing is not really applicable in this case.

Kind of
I already talked at ESUG last year about that with bernahrd.


>
> regards, Göran
>

On 23 Apr 2012, at 16:04, Göran Krampe wrote:

> Ok, let me clarify. I was just wondering how the Pharo community wants to handle a case where a substantial component (in this case, this new editor) is not *primarily* developed in Pharo (in this case Cuis).

Göran,

You know that many packages, even some very large ones, are reasonably portable.

But I guess portability kind of stops when non-trivial GUI usage is involved.

Also, as Pharo is making more and more changes, portability will become harder and harder until it is mostly gone.

There are only two solutions:

- write your own code to a least common feature set and miss all the new APIs
- halt all non-compatible changes in Pharo and stop its evolution

Neither are attractive options I guess.

Sven

On 04/23/2012 05:02 PM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:
Ok, good!

cheers, Göran

Goran (and others)

I know that you know but let me repeat it.

Our goal is to push as much as we can so that other people that us can make money
building software with Pharo. We want to get pharo bring money in the community and that people can make a living with it.
I would love to be invited to celebrate the wealth of company having success with Pharo.

Now we do not have that much money to pay people for improving the system. May be marcus is ranting
because he sees that with a bit of care in the past the base system would not force us to spend a lot of energy improving
it and we could focus on the next generation. Because this is what we want to do, invent the future: new compiler, first class instance variable, micro kernel… We are getting there but we are fixing a lot while doing that. A lot and more.

As a researcher we could just create our own little smalltalk and be happy and life forever. Now improving Pharo is a tedious and ****difficult****, not bold, ….. task. Now we welcome people that want to help pushing in that direction and we want to go as fast as
we can (because time passes and we are getting old :)).

Stef: I'm clean :)

Hi Göran,

Thanks for your question! I have posted the announcement of the Styled Text Editor to the Pharo list as well because I still have not given up on the idea to port it to Squeak and Pharo. It is not straightforward but I consider it possible.

Currently the Styled Text Editor is an external package which is loaded on top of Cuis 4.0. The API it uses is quite specific to Cuis so to port it alone is probably too much effort. What I think can be done is the following:
Split Cuis into three parts,
a) the parts which are not needed for Styled Text Editor, like the Cuis tools
b) the parts of Cuis Morphic the Styled Text Editor depends on – this is in my opinion the most valuable part of Cuis because Juan spent years cleaning it
c) the Smalltalk kernel below

The idea is to port only part b) and the Styled Text Editor. And it has to be done automatically by a tool which creates packages for Squeak and Pharo, always from the latest code base. In addition you will probably need small Cuis portability packages done manually, one for Squeak and one for Pharo.

Being able to always load the latest code base of Styled Text Editor and Cuis Morphic as an external package in Pharo is a prerequisite to look into possibilities of sharing more of the code.

I plan to write a more detailed proposal and then to approach ESUG and ask for support for the funding. Any ideas for other sources of funding are highly welcome and could speed things up considerably, of course! ;-)

I for one have not given up on the idea that it might be possible to develop substantial components as you called it – thank you for that as well – in a more Squeak-dialect-independent way. ;-)

Finally, I would like to take the opportunity and kindly ask everyone who has not done so yet: Please check out Cuis 4.0 and the Styled Text Editor and give us feedback, even if it does not (yet) run on your favourite Squeak dialect! Thank you!

Peace,
Bernhard

P.S. Thanks to Göran and Janko for trying to establish different threads for the rather off-topic discussions that my announcement posting has caused.

Am 23.04.2012 um 16:04 schrieb Göran Krampe:

Would the Spoon project be relevant for this scenario?  Craig mentioned
on the Spoon list that he is working with Cuis.

On 4/23/12 11:53 AM, Bernhard Pieber wrote:

I stop reacting to these things long ago. It just a waste of time.
I don't care if people prefer A over B or C over D, as long as they
are not evangelizing me make same choice.


I never spew on Squeak or people, since i am part of community.. and
its like spewing on myself at the end...

Apart from it, lying the facts about quality of some smelly Squeak
code (and consequently Pharo as well, since it inherits from it).
There is no need to divide on camps. Bad code is bad code, no matter
if it is in Squeak or Pharo.
As i told before, i prefer to call 'crap' what is crap. And it is
completely neutral towards fork(s), and based only on quality of code
in question and my bias towards better solutions :)
And i expect that pointing out to this should not provoke negative
emotions, but an efforts to fix it (or discussion how to fix it).

And i DO respect an effort of people who implemented things we using..
Even if implementation not perfect.
But hey, we are here to fix it! And pointing out to flaw is a first step.

2012/4/23 Göran Krampe <[hidden email]>:


--
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko.

> Thanks for your question! I have posted the announcement of the Styled Text Editor to the Pharo list as well because I still have not given up on the idea to port it to Squeak and Pharo. It is not straightforward but I consider it possible.
>
> Currently the Styled Text Editor is an external package which is loaded on top of Cuis 4.0. The API it uses is quite specific to Cuis so to port it alone is probably too much effort. What I think can be done is the following:
> Split Cuis into three parts,
> a) the parts which are not needed for Styled Text Editor, like the Cuis tools
> b) the parts of Cuis Morphic the Styled Text Editor depends on – this is in my opinion the most valuable part of Cuis because Juan spent years cleaning it
> c) the Smalltalk kernel below

good idea

> The idea is to port only part b) and the Styled Text Editor. And it has to be done automatically by a tool which creates packages for Squeak and Pharo, always from the latest code base. In addition you will probably need small Cuis portability packages done manually, one for Squeak and one for Pharo.
>
> Being able to always load the latest code base of Styled Text Editor and Cuis Morphic as an external package in Pharo is a prerequisite to look into possibilities of sharing more of the code.
>
> I plan to write a more detailed proposal and then to approach ESUG and ask for support for the funding. Any ideas for other sources of funding are highly welcome and could speed things up considerably, of course! ;-)
>
> I for one have not given up on the idea that it might be possible to develop substantial components as you called it – thank you for that as well – in a more Squeak-dialect-independent way. ;-)

> Thanks for your question! I have posted the announcement of the Styled Text Editor to the Pharo list as well because I still have not given up on the idea to port it to Squeak and Pharo. It is not straightforward but I consider it possible.
>
> Currently the Styled Text Editor is an external package which is loaded on top of Cuis 4.0. The API it uses is quite specific to Cuis so to port it alone is probably too much effort. What I think can be done is the following:
> Split Cuis into three parts,
> a) the parts which are not needed for Styled Text Editor, like the Cuis tools
> b) the parts of Cuis Morphic the Styled Text Editor depends on – this is in my opinion the most valuable part of Cuis because Juan spent years cleaning it
> c) the Smalltalk kernel below

good idea

> The idea is to port only part b) and the Styled Text Editor. And it has to be done automatically by a tool which creates packages for Squeak and Pharo, always from the latest code base. In addition you will probably need small Cuis portability packages done manually, one for Squeak and one for Pharo.
>
> Being able to always load the latest code base of Styled Text Editor and Cuis Morphic as an external package in Pharo is a prerequisite to look into possibilities of sharing more of the code.
>
> I plan to write a more detailed proposal and then to approach ESUG and ask for support for the funding. Any ideas for other sources of funding are highly welcome and could speed things up considerably, of course! ;-)
>
> I for one have not given up on the idea that it might be possible to develop substantial components as you called it – thank you for that as well – in a more Squeak-dialect-independent way. ;-)

Bernhard,

With regards to sharing code between dialects, I'd like to recommend that you look into porting Cypress to Cuis (I'm willing to help as much as I can).

The Cypress project is aimed from the get go to enable sharing of packages between Smalltalk dialects with a recognition that possibly the most important aspect is a shared VCS (git/github).

If you look at the current code base in Cypress, you will see a reference implementation written against Pharo. The reference implementation is a work in progress and the initial implementation was done for Amber[2].

Cypress has Monticello-like packages, but other than taking a few ideas from Monticello (definitions, packages and snapshots ... more than a few:)) the code base is independent of Monticello. The fact that Cypress runs on top of Amber (sans file system access) speaks volumes for it's portability.

To paraphrase a point from my STIC talk[3] on this subject:

  Cypress is not intended to be the primary version control
  system for any dialect, however, if you want to share code
  between dialects you should allow your developers to import
  and export code using the Cypress package format.

If you are interested, there are bits and pieces of code in a few other projects that I would want to pull into the Cypress project and couple other things that I'd like to move out of the Cypress project before tackling another port ...

We can correspond via private email if you'd like to take me up on the offer of help:)

Dale

[1] https://github.com/CampSmalltalk/Cypress
[2] https://github.com/CampSmalltalk/amber-cypress
[3] http://portal.sliderocket.com/vmware/STIC-2012-Practical-Git-for-Smalltalk

----- Original Message -----
| From: "Bernhard Pieber" <[hidden email]>
| To: [hidden email]
| Sent: Monday, April 23, 2012 9:53:35 AM
| Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] [ANN] Styled Text Editor for Cuis 4.0 Smalltalk
|
| Hi Göran,
|
| Thanks for your question! I have posted the announcement of the
| Styled Text Editor to the Pharo list as well because I still have
| not given up on the idea to port it to Squeak and Pharo. It is not
| straightforward but I consider it possible.
|
| Currently the Styled Text Editor is an external package which is
| loaded on top of Cuis 4.0. The API it uses is quite specific to Cuis
| so to port it alone is probably too much effort. What I think can be
| done is the following:
| Split Cuis into three parts,
| a) the parts which are not needed for Styled Text Editor, like the
| Cuis tools
| b) the parts of Cuis Morphic the Styled Text Editor depends on – this
| is in my opinion the most valuable part of Cuis because Juan spent
| years cleaning it
| c) the Smalltalk kernel below
|
| The idea is to port only part b) and the Styled Text Editor. And it
| has to be done automatically by a tool which creates packages for
| Squeak and Pharo, always from the latest code base. In addition you
| will probably need small Cuis portability packages done manually,
| one for Squeak and one for Pharo.
|
| Being able to always load the latest code base of Styled Text Editor
| and Cuis Morphic as an external package in Pharo is a prerequisite
| to look into possibilities of sharing more of the code.
|
| I plan to write a more detailed proposal and then to approach ESUG
| and ask for support for the funding. Any ideas for other sources of
| funding are highly welcome and could speed things up considerably,
| of course! ;-)
|
| I for one have not given up on the idea that it might be possible to
| develop substantial components as you called it – thank you for that
| as well – in a more Squeak-dialect-independent way. ;-)
|
| Finally, I would like to take the opportunity and kindly ask everyone
| who has not done so yet: Please check out Cuis 4.0 and the Styled
| Text Editor and give us feedback, even if it does not (yet) run on
| your favourite Squeak dialect! Thank you!
|
| Peace,
| Bernhard
|
| P.S. Thanks to Göran and Janko for trying to establish different
| threads for the rather off-topic discussions that my announcement
| posting has caused.
|
| Am 23.04.2012 um 16:04 schrieb Göran Krampe:
| > Hi!
| >
| > On 04/23/2012 03:40 PM, Stéphane Ducasse wrote:
| >>> Just cloning it off into Pharo and forking seems... less optimal.
| >>> Any ideas or thoughts?
| >>
| >> I do not get what you mean. I just want to work on our roadmap and
| >> make it getting real.
| >> It is hard enough to get some momentum and to deliver for real.
| >> So can you help us to get focused?
| >> People can do what they want. I wrote a vision document. We have a
| >> roadmap
| >> and we will do it.
| >
| > Ok, let me clarify. I was just wondering how the Pharo community
| > wants to handle a case where a substantial component (in this
| > case, this new editor) is not *primarily* developed in Pharo (in
| > this case Cuis).
| >
| > The simple route is to just copy and fork. But IMHO this doesn't
| > leverage the team already around this editor, right? We (Pharo)
| > can't just go around and forking everything and maintaining
| > everything for ourselves, right?
| >
| > I just got interested in that problem - now, later replies
| > indicated that it would still need a substantial rewrite for
| > Pharo, so perhaps the situation I am describing is not really
| > applicable in this case.
| >
| > regards, Göran
| >
|
|
|

Quoting David Graham <[hidden email]>:

> Would the Spoon project be relevant for this scenario?  Craig  
> mentioned on the Spoon list that he is working with Cuis.

Hi David,

I think Spoon could be very useful. I'm waiting for some tutorial or  
howto on how to use Spoon for this.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich