Bloc, Bloc 2 and Brick

Hi Stef,

from past discussions/threads I know "Bloc" as Pharo's possible future UI, watched the video [1] and have played with the premade
image from the CI Server. Also the Brick layer (which is on top of Bloc) was announced as a preview once [2].


Now in some of the mails it was mentioned that there will be or already is a "Bloc 2" (see [3]). Can you or the person
working on it summarize:

 - who works on it
 - what are the goals, what will be included (like the CSS styling)
 - where it is hosted
 - what the status is
 - if there is already a CI build or preview
 - how Brick will relate to "Bloc 2", will there be a "Brick 2" as well?
 - if it will work with Spec

Even if not all could be answered (yet) more informations on "Bloc 2" would really be nice, ideally as a
status summary to the community.

Thanks
T.

[1] https://vimeo.com/115336678
[2] http://gtoolkit.org/brick/
[3] http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo-dev_lists.pharo.org/2016-August/123115.html

Hi,

We are still in exploration mode with respect to design and this is why you see several internal names. We expect to have a clear structure within a couple of weeks, and there will be an announcement on that. In the end, there will be exactly one single Bloc and one single Brick.

Cheers,
Doru


--
www.tudorgirba.com
www.feenk.com

"Presenting is storytelling."

On Tue, Aug 2, 2016 at 6:58 PM, Torsten Bergmann <[hidden email]> wrote:
You read my thoughts Torsten.  It would seem something has been learnt
from Bloc 1 to necessitate a change in direction.  This would be
interesting to know, as well as the plan for the new architecture.

I don't know what is the funding arrangements are to develop Bloc 2.
If its mostly someone's free time then maybe we can't put too much
demands on status report.  However since Bloc will become a core part
of Pharo, perhaps it is worthwhile for the Pharo Association (or other
body) to fund such a status report for the community.  A detailed
forward plan may have the side effect to encourage participation.

cheers -ben

Glenn sent me this teaser but I was waiting

:)

Hi Stef,

from past discussions/threads I know "Bloc" as Pharo's possible future UI, watched the video [1] 

yes it was cool :)

and have played with the premade 
image from the CI Server. Also the Brick layer (which is on top of Bloc) was announced as a preview once [2].


Now in some of the mails it was mentioned that there will be or already is a "Bloc 2" (see [3]). Can you or the person
working on it summarize:

 - who works on it

    Glenn Cavarle with Alain Plantec (and me from far and too little time) and Doru but I do not know much from that part.
    There was a separate slack team and since I did not like this idea I did not ask to join it.
    May be now this is folded back in the Pharo slack channel which to me would be better.

 - what are the goals, what will be included (like the CSS styling)

    Glenn implemented a new version of Bloc because he needed one for his job
    The flux in Bloc from October did not match with his requirements so without telling it to Alain and me he built one
    until he could show us something working and it works.
    I should say that I was also frustrated by the results of the discussions since October. Especially since before presenting
    Bloc to ESUG we got 4 versions and I tried to follow alain and help him documenting Bloc and while my stupid questions helped him
    it was difficult for me. So I really appreciate the effort of Glenn.

    In June we spent three days to understand if we should merge Bloc2 into Bloc and we decided the inverse because
    his implementation is based on SDL and a separate window) it does not suffer from the morphic plague. So for example
    the event bubbling is nice and clean. The idea is to be able to use one window (morphic) to develop
    all the widgets and displayed in the SDL window needed up to the point where we can remove morphic.

    So Bloc2 can benefit from the work of Aliak on Sparta and the mozzD backend.
    The idea is also to integrate the work on aliak on layouts.

    Bloc2
        SDL2
        nice bubbling
        Bloc layout
        Sparta or MozzD back-end
        Nice core without the problem mention back in feb
        CSS styling
       
here is what Gellen two me the 25 of July

    Concernant Bloc, ça devient assez stable mais il reste encore des sujets à valider/améliorer/stabiliser:
        - styles&themes -> 1ère ébauche réalisée
        - Path (Shapes custom) -> voir ce que l'on peut reprendre de Athens-SVG
        - KeyBinding -> 1ère version  très simple réalisée mais sans la gestion des séquences (ctrl A+B)
        - Animation -> première version plutôt concluante
        - Parenté des fenêtres ou sous-fenêtres
        - Amélioration des performances de dessin par création de surfaces au niveau de BlElement -> premier résultats concluant mais non-intégré.
        - Gestion des Gestures (MultiTouch) -> migration des gestures d'OSWindow au niveau de Bloc sous forme d'EventListener (pas de gestures globales)
        - Gestion du Focus keyboard -> la base y est mais il reste encore pas mal de boulot
        - Mise en relation DnD et Clipboard -> l'instructure est là mais il reste à faire le "cablage"
        - ...
       
    J'essaie de mettre ma roadmap au propre pour début de semaine prochaine.
    Les prochains widgets sur ma liste sont: scrollbar & liste,

 - where it is hosted

    For the moment you can find it in GlennCavarle repo on smalltalkhub.
    Glenn is working for a company for ihs PhD and a week on two he is working on Bloc2.
    Bloc2 is key for Glenn and Alain since Thales wants to use it.
   
    MCHttpRepository
        location: 'http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/GlennCavarle/Bloc2/main'
        user: ''
        password: ''

    Now with the name removal we got some trouble to load it in Pharo 60.
    You can load it in Pharo 50. Say yes to all the warnings.

    Doru told me that he is talking with Glenn and that Bloc2 will be moved to the Bloc repo (by the end of this week).
   
    Esteban is following the discussions and will help for the SDL part and FFI. The SDL is fragile and the system freezes from time to time.
    But 64 bits first :)
   

 - what the status is

    The core design looks stable to me.
    We can import SVG, create first buttons and style them (the skins in Bloc2 are so far not a theme) and the CSS is not
    for Skins but for style.
    Widgets can start to be built on top. The problem is that Brick took a glitch in Bloc1 and uses it against the expectation
    of Alain. So I do not think that we can port easily Brick to Bloc2.
    I started to read everything. And I will start to improve the class comments.

 - if there is already a CI build or preview

    You can load it from Glenn's repo
    There are examples. During holiday I tried to set up a jenkins but the network was too bad.
    This is on my todo but I'm busy since I'm back to work.
   

 - how Brick will relate to "Bloc 2", will there be a "Brick 2" as well?

    I think that Brick should be rewritten on top of Bloc2 because the design of Brick
    was the thing that made Bloc get changed in October and after it changed too much.

 - if it will work with Spec

    Spec is orthogonal.
    As soon as we will have widgets we will do a Spec binding for them.
    In the long term we will see if another framework wants to replace Spec to compose widgets (I know that alain has some ideas)
    but for now we want to be able to move our tool fast to new Brick and it should be possible and it should also
    simplify Spec because some of the design points of Spec are ugly because the old widget relay on change/update and
    what is needed is a notification (announcement).

Even if not all could be answered (yet) more informations on "Bloc 2" would really be nice, ideally as a 
status summary to the community.

Thanks
T.

[1] https://vimeo.com/115336678
[2] http://gtoolkit.org/brick/
[3] http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo-dev_lists.pharo.org/2016-August/123115.html

Hi Torsten

Thanks for your interest. Yes Bloc is important to me (I'm waiting for
it since Miro and Miro2 and all the work I asked igor to do

around Athens and SDL)

Glenn sent me a teaser (see attachement) last week

Le 2/8/16 à 12:58, Torsten Bergmann a écrit :      Glenn Cavarle with Alain Plantec (and me from far and too little
time) and Doru but I do not know much from that part.
>   - what are the goals, what will be included (like the CSS styling)
     Glenn implemented a new version of Bloc because he needed one for
his job
     The flux in Bloc from October did not match with his requirements
so without telling it to Alain and me he built one
     until he could show us something working and it works.
     I should say that I was also frustrated by the results of the
discussions since October. Especially since before presenting
     Bloc to ESUG we got 4 versions and I tried to follow alain and help
him documenting Bloc and while my stupid questions helped him
     it was difficult for me. So I really appreciate the effort of Glenn.

     In June we spent three days to understand if we should merge Bloc2
into Bloc and we decided the inverse because
     his implementation is based on SDL and a separate window) it does
not suffer from the morphic plague. So for example
     the event bubbling is nice and clean. The idea is to be able to use
one window (morphic) to develop
     all the widgets and displayed in the SDL window needed up to the
point where we can remove morphic.

     So Bloc2 can benefit from the work of Aliak on Sparta and the mozzD
backend.
     The idea is also to integrate the work on aliak on layouts.
>   - where it is hosted
     For the moment you can find it in GlennCavarle repo on smalltalkhub.
     Glenn is working for a company for ihs PhD and a week on two he is
working on Bloc2.
     Bloc2 is key for Glenn and Alain since Thales wants to use it.

     MCHttpRepository
         location: 'http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/GlennCavarle/Bloc2/main'
         user: ''
         password: ''

     Now with the name removal we got some trouble to load it in Pharo 60.
     You can load it in Pharo 50. Say yes to all the warnings.

     Doru told me that he is talking with Glenn and that Bloc2 will be
moved to the Bloc repo (by the end of this week).

     Esteban is following the discussions and will help for the SDL part
and FFI. The SDL is fragile and the system freezes from time to time.
     But 64 bits first :)

>   - what the status is
     The core design looks stable to me.
     We can import SVG, create first buttons and style them (the skins
in Bloc2 are so far not a theme) and the CSS is not
     for Skins but for style.
     Widgets can start to be built on top. The problem is that Brick
took a glitch in Bloc1 and uses it against the expectation
     of Alain. So I do not think that we can port easily Brick to Bloc2.
     I started to read everything. And I will start to improve the class
comments.

     Bloc2
         - nice core
         - SDL based
         - nice bubbling of event
         - Bloc1+ Sparta and MozzD back end
         - Bloc1+ aliak layout
         - Bloc1 event handler
         - CSS styling

     Here is what glenn sent me last week (I translated it but
thunderbird crashed!)

     Concernant Bloc, ça devient assez stable mais il reste encore des
sujets à valider/améliorer/stabiliser:
         - styles&themes -> 1ère ébauche réalisée
         - Path (Shapes custom) -> voir ce que l'on peut reprendre de
Athens-SVG
         - KeyBinding -> 1ère version  très simple réalisée mais sans la
gestion des séquences (ctrl A+B)
         - Animation -> première version plutôt concluante
         - Parenté des fenêtres ou sous-fenêtres
         - Amélioration des performances de dessin par création de
surfaces au niveau de BlElement -> premier résultats concluant mais
non-intégré.
         - Gestion des Gestures (MultiTouch) -> migration des gestures
d'OSWindow au niveau de Bloc sous forme d'EventListener (pas de gestures
globales)
         - Gestion du Focus keyboard -> la base y est mais il reste
encore pas mal de boulot
         - Mise en relation DnD et Clipboard -> l'instructure est là
mais il reste à faire le "cablage"
         - ...

     J'essaie de mettre ma roadmap au propre pour début de semaine
prochaine.
     Les prochains widgets sur ma liste sont: scrollbar & liste

Now Doru told me that he should discuss with Glenn of certain design point.
My wish is that such discussions do not kill Bloc2 because else I will
leave this community :).
Now I'm confident that something good will happen because Glenn needs it
for his future.

>   - if there is already a CI build or preview
     There are examples. During holiday I tried to set up a jenkins but
the network was too bad.
     This is on my todo but I'm busy since I'm back to work.

>   - how Brick will relate to "Bloc 2", will there be a "Brick 2" as well?
     I think that Brick should be rewritten on top of Bloc2 because the
design of Brick
     was the thing that made Bloc get changed in October and after it
changed too much.
>   - if it will work with Spec
     Spec is orthogonal.
     As soon as we will have widgets we will do a Spec binding for them.
     In the long term we will see if another framework wants to replace
Spec to compose widgets (I know that alain has some ideas)
     but for now we want to be able to move our tool fast to new Brick
and it should be possible and it should also
     simplify Spec because some of the design points of Spec are ugly
because the old widget relay on change/update and
     what is needed is a notification (announcement).

Le 2/8/16 à 15:47, Ben Coman a écrit :
You see as I mention in my other mail: Glenn was not happy with the move
inside Bloc1+
and he took all his experience and discussions on Bloc1+ and build a new
one.
> You read my thoughts Torsten.  It would seem something has been learnt
> from Bloc 1 to necessitate a change in direction.  This would be
> interesting to know, as well as the plan for the new architecture.
The plans (as far as Alain, Glenn and Thales are concerned) is that we
will have a roadmap soon :)

>
> I don't know what is the funding arrangements are to develop Bloc 2.
There are none. Glenn is doing it instead of working on his PhD but he
needs it also for his PhD.
and I hope part of it will be able to be part of his PhD. My plan is to
help Glenn for his PhD.
> If its mostly someone's free time then maybe we can't put too much
> demands on status report.  However since Bloc will become a core part
> of Pharo, perhaps it is worthwhile for the Pharo Association (or other
> body) to fund such a status report for the community.  A detailed
> forward plan may have the side effect to encourage participation.
Glenn and Alain were a bit secret because it was not clear how Bloc
contributors would react.
I was involved since I push Bloc since its early genesis.

Since now this is going in the right direction, the project is now
public, you can load it and it works.
I do not know if the discussions are public on pharo slack channels now
(they should be in Pharo and not in a private
slack). Now what is important to understand is that Glenn is busy and
Alain has some family
problems.

Now the plan is to have a presentation at ESUG between aliak and glenn.
So we should get something.

Stef

>
> cheers -ben
>
>

stepharo wrote

...

     In June we spent three days to understand if we should merge Bloc2
into Bloc and we decided the inverse because
     his implementation is based on SDL and a separate window) it does
not suffer from the morphic plague. So for example
     the event bubbling is nice and clean. The idea is to be able to use
one window (morphic) to develop
     all the widgets and displayed in the SDL window needed up to the
point where we can remove morphic.

...

Does that mean that Bloc will only work in separate window until Morphic is fully replaced and removed from the image?
That would take many years I guess.

And before that, all tools like debugger etc. will open themselves in host (Morphic) window?

Le 7/8/16 à 17:01, webwarrior a écrit : Yes.
> That would take many years I guess.
Not really. Once we have nice widgets we can go fast.
Especially since we started to do it by using things like Spec.
> And before that, all tools like debugger etc. will open themselves in host
> (Morphic) window?
Yes.
I can tell you that it was not an easy solution when I see the pain that
alain got to make Bloc worked within morphic but the pay load was too high.

Stef

>
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Bloc-Bloc-2-and-Brick-tp4909112p4909861.html
> Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>