Brain storming request: Semantic zooming for Roassal

Hi!

I've just found this video:
http://cel.inf.usi.ch/index.php?action=gallery

I am not sure I really want to program a tetris that way, but the tool they have is interesting. It intensively use zooming in and out. When you zoom in, you see different objects and when you zoom out they disappear or they change their visual representation.

For Roassal, we are thinking about adding new graphical elements when a particular height of the camera is reached. The elements will then disappear when the camera is getting altitude. However, it looks a bit simple in my opinion. Is there any compelling scenario for a better mechanism?

Is there anything else you guys want to see in this zooming ability?

Cheers,
Alexandre
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I think it has an obvious application in software architecture
visualization.

It's called drill down and people like it.

You select a dependency between two packages.
The you zoom in (drill down) and you see the two classes that are
actually in dependency.
Drill down, you see the method invocation and the 2 methods
Drill further down, you see the actual instruction in the calling method
[drill down even more and you see the bit code of the compiled method ?
;-) ]


One could also use it to navigate in the code:
Take a variable declaration, zoom in it's type and you open the class
declaration, zoom in the class and you see it's components, ...
May be it is not so much a good idea here, because zooming in makes you
going up and down abstraction levels (from variable to class, to its
components, to an other class, ...)


I'd better go to sleep

nicolas

On 19/07/12 22:33, Alexandre Bergel wrote:
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> You select a dependency between two packages.
> The you zoom in (drill down) and you see the two classes that are actually in dependency.
> Drill down, you see the method invocation and the 2 methods
> Drill further down, you see the actual instruction in the calling method
> [drill down even more and you see the bit code of the compiled method ? ;-) ]

Should this recursion be infinite?
Once I have the method invocation and I continue zooming, is the class still getting bigger (because you are zooming).
On some point, the camera will simply reach the surface you are currently zooming in.
An easy way to circumvent this issue, is to have have a stack of views. Views get activated under certain condition of the camera of another view.

In Roassal, each view has a camera. Another solution, is to have a camera per graphical element.

> One could also use it to navigate in the code:
> Take a variable declaration, zoom in it's type and you open the class declaration, zoom in the class and you see it's components, ...
> May be it is not so much a good idea here, because zooming in makes you going up and down abstraction levels (from variable to class, to its components, to an other class, ...)

Maybe in that case you want to have a "hot frame" (I do not remember the name) that Doru's proposed for Glamour. Press Cmd - space and you get a window that shows you an inspector.
Looking at the source code is a very frequent operation, you probably do not want to constantly zoom in and out.

Cheers,
Alexandre

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Zooming is interesting and since Athens canvas is opening the vectorial space we should definitively
try. I have serious doubt that this can of modeling will go anyway. It may be a fun master or bachelor topics.
Now I would like to be able to build the same with Pharo:
        clean event
        nice support for zoom

and we are getting closer and closer.

Stef
On Jul 19, 2012, at 10:33 PM, Alexandre Bergel wrote:


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Thanks Mircea

We will soon release it

Alexandre


On Jul 25, 2012, at 10:40 AM, Mircea Filip Lungu wrote:

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