Future of Spec

Dear all,

A few weeks ago, I read about the dispute on Spec, which has escalated, and as a result of that, Ben has left the Pharo/Smalltalk community. It's always sad when a long term member leaves, but live is going on.

From my (somewhat business minded) point of view one question is currently unanswered:
Is there a future of Spec (without Ben)?

I'm asking this because I'm the author of a web frontend engine which can be bound to a programming language (like Pharo) to create desktop-like web applications. Currently there is an implementation for the J programming language as well as a rough (but working) implementation for Pharo. My plans for the (far) future is to bind the frontend engine to Pharo in a more elegant way probably by extending Spec. So one may write a desktop application in Spec, and a corresponding web GUI is automatically created as well.

So I'm currently a little unsure whether to go with Spec or going back to the good old Polymorph.

Is somebody of the core team able to clarify the situation?

Many thanks in advance.

Martin

Hi martin
> Dear all,
>
> A few weeks ago, I read about the dispute on Spec, which has escalated, and as a result of that, Ben has left the Pharo/Smalltalk community. It's always sad when a long term member leaves, but live is going on.

Indeed.
>
>  From my (somewhat business minded) point of view one question is currently unanswered:
> Is there a future of Spec (without Ben)?

Yes. Definitively. :) It will move slower but we will. I started to
clean Spec double unnecessary interpretation loop
Ben was not alone behind Spec. The idea is coming from my experience
writing application in VW. Johan also helped. So we do not stress much.
Esteban has a new Spec interpreter on hold since a long long time. We
cleaned with igor many methods to improve the GC stress when we
introduced new version of LayoutFrame. And Esteban always wanted to do a
pass on Spec. So we will plan that.

If you look we are continuously making sure that the system will evolve
nicely.
     some issues are planned on fogzbugs
     https://pharo.fogbugz.com/default.asp?13888
     https://pharo.fogbugz.com/default.asp?13479
     https://pharo.fogbugz.com/default.asp?13851#107599
> I'm asking this because I'm the author of a web frontend engine which can be bound to a programming language (like Pharo) to create desktop-like web applications.

Super can you tell us more?
Did you look at Phobos?
>   Currently there is an implementation for the J programming language as well as a rough (but working) implementation for Pharo. My plans for the (far) future is to bind the frontend engine to Pharo in a more elegant way probably by extending Spec.
Excellent. We need clients and we will pay attention to you.
> So one may write a desktop application in Spec, and a corresponding web GUI is automatically created as well.

We want the same for Cocoa Widgets :)
Esteban has a first draft of a brigde so we could define our interface
in Spec and run the with Mars (the bridge) and get Cocoa widgets.
> So I'm currently a little unsure whether to go with Spec or going back to the good old Polymorph.

In fact it depends of your needs.
Glenn started to use spec and went directly to morphic because some
aspects of widgets are not covered by Spec (we should improve the
coverage of the Morph
API - color, selection....).
Now the API of polymorph is not really good because widget creation api
should be widget class and not UITheme. So I started to see how we could
improve the
situation and the first step is that every widgets with labels should be
font parametrized and access a theme. Then the API will be migrated from
UI to the widgets.
I will restart to work on that after 15 of october (or before if I
finish my current proposal writing).



>
> Is somebody of the core team able to clarify the situation?

Let me know if this is ok for you.
>
> Many thanks in advance.
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>

+ 1 :)

We are planning to integrate GT tools but this is at another level and the future is bright and shinning :)

Stef

Well as the discussion was in another thread , Spec is licensed as MIT inside Pharo , the new GPL license seems to affect any present and future contributions from Ben. So I will say yes it looks like Spec is here to stay, I may not be a fan of Spec design but they are many Pharoers out there that they are and since Pharo community is quite democratic looks like Spec is here to stay. The Pharo team wont be able to add in Pharo any GPL affected contributions of Ben ( assuming Ben continuous to develop Spec which I doubt) but Pharoers can continue to contribute to the Pharo MIT Spec . So it looks like the effect is minimum if you exclude the fact we lost the most major contributor to Spec. 

So far the idea is to push forward both Spec and Morphic and personally I really like this idea as it lets people more options on the GUI front which can be only good thing since anyone this way can use the right tool for his or her own needs. It would also be a lot of shame if Ben's hard work goes to waste even though he decided to give up pharo, we have to respect his choice but also his work make sure his effort don't go wasted as he built a tool that many people find useful. 

So yes you can keep using Spec and I am sure we will all appreciate any contribution you make to Spec :) 

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 10:15 PM, Martin Saurer <[hidden email]> wrote:

Dear all,

A few weeks ago, I read about the dispute on Spec, which has escalated, and as a result of that, Ben has left the Pharo/Smalltalk community. It's always sad when a long term member leaves, but live is going on.

>From my (somewhat business minded) point of view one question is currently unanswered:
Is there a future of Spec (without Ben)?

I'm asking this because I'm the author of a web frontend engine which can be bound to a programming language (like Pharo) to create desktop-like web applications. Currently there is an implementation for the J programming language as well as a rough (but working) implementation for Pharo. My plans for the (far) future is to bind the frontend engine to Pharo in a more elegant way probably by extending Spec. So one may write a desktop application in Spec, and a corresponding web GUI is automatically created as well.

So I'm currently a little unsure whether to go with Spec or going back to the good old Polymorph.

Is somebody of the core team able to clarify the situation?

Many thanks in advance.

Martin

I like this spirit :)

On Fri, Aug 29, 2014 at 9:46 AM, stepharo <[hidden email]> wrote:

the future is bright and shinning :)

Stef

--

www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

Dear Stef,
Dear Pharo Community,

Many thanks for answering my question about the future of Spec.

What I have done for the J platform, and now will try to do for Pharo is not directly
comparable to Phobos (XULrunner) or Cocoa Widgets. At least I think so.
If you are interested please take a look at: http://www.jsoftware.com/jwiki/Scripts/qjide

The qfe (Qooxdoo Frontend Engine) which is part of the qjide on the J platform is based
on the Ajax Framework "Qooxdoo" http://www.qooxdoo.org.

The qfe is a JavaScript library which acts like Qt, WinForms, Cocoa, Morphic, etc. for the
desktop, but lives entirely in the web browser.
The web application itself is written in 100% J (now), or 100% Pharo (in the future).
To build a qfe based web application, there is no need to use HTML, CSS, XULrunner, etc.
The qfe may be bound to nearly any programming platform which has a web server.
Pharo together with the Zinc server is a great environment for creating web applications
that use a rich widget set like qfe provides.

The final goal will be to create a Pharo GUI extension (probably based on Spec), where
applications can be opened like
   MyGUIApp openInWorld.
or
   MyGUIApp openInWeb.

The first one opens a Spec (or Morphic) desktop GUI application in the Pharo window.
The second one serves the same application with (nearly) the same look-and-feel as a
web application.

I will be happy to answer any questions on qfe.

Cheers

Martin

as far as I understand J is an APL like language so I was wondering with
you do not have J binding inside pharo :) ?
and script J from there?

Stef

On 29/8/14 21:15, Martin Saurer wrote:

It's already planned ;-)

Martin

> as far as I understand J is an APL like language so I was wondering
> with you do not have J binding inside pharo :) ?
> and script J from there?
>
> Stef

On 31/8/14 08:32, Martin Saurer wrote:
> It's already planned ;-)

:)
excellent!

Stef