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GUI construction under Pharo

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Ichiseki

GUI construction under Pharo

Hi
For what I've read and study Smalltalk was great a RAD, it was infact used a lot in financial services for that reason.
Now I see that most commercial versions of Smalltalk have a GUI builder, but non of the open source.
Wouldn't have a GUI building tool be a priority?
Perhaps this is already done?
best

Ichiro

carlok

Re: GUI construction under Pharo

Check out Smalltalk/X (it has, among other things, a GUI builder; opensouce, with the exception of the smalltalk-to-c compiler & parts of runtime support; promise given that if Exept or Claus Gittinger were to stop supporting it, the missing sources will be published)

Homepage: http://www.exept.de/en/products/smalltalkx

Smalltalk/X, a product from eXept Software AG, is a complete implementation of the programming language Smalltalk, class library and development environment, providing:

- An object-oriented programming language
- Graphic development environment with editors, browsers, debuggers, GUI builders, etc.
- Incremental compilation, byte code interpreter and dynamic (just-in-time) compiler
- Static compilation and DLL generation, controlled by make-files
- Comprehensive class library with ready-to-use modules for applications
- Open Smalltalk source code.

Implementation of the language and class library complies with the draft ANSI standard and the industry standard.

Free to Use! Smalltalk/X may be used even for the development of commercial software and applications without any licence fee (a few minor restrictions apply). Please take a look at the licence conditions, which are part of the download package.

-----------------------------

Development branch: https://swing.fit.cvut.cz/projects/stx-jv/wiki

Smalltalk/X jv branch is an unofficial version of Smalltalk/X maintained by Jan Vrany. This enhanced version includes newest features that are not (yet) integrated into Smalltalk/X upstream nor released by eXept. Smalltalk/X jv branch gives you an idea what might be available in next official versions released by eXept.

- Improved tools like class browser, inspector, file browser, change browser...
- STX:LIBJAVA to load and run Java inside Smalltalk/X
- Mercurial support
- SmallSense coding productivity plugin
- Tools for diffing and merging Smalltalk/X packages
- Much more...

philippeback

Re: GUI construction under Pharo

In reply to this post by Ichiseki

There has been attempts to do that and Spec (htttp://spec.st) provides a declarative model.

The spec (check implementors of defaultSpec for a couple samples) is basically what a GUI builder would produce and use to deifne the UI.

As far as I know, VisualWorks uses such a spec approach as well. http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/documentation/VisualWorks/GUIDevGuide.pdf

(search for windowSpec in the text)

Frankly, for a moderately complex UI, you need to understand what's going on and I think a GUI builder isn't going to offer any benefit vs development time. The best thing I've seen is Matisse in Netbeans but it wasn't really useful for an app we wrote in Java/Swing with a lot of weird controls and interdependent fields. This is especially true when one has dynamic layouts to do. And that's why a webbrowser has a lot of advantages these days (Maybe not to write CAD software but it will come).

HTH

Phil

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Ichiseki <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi
For what I've read and study Smalltalk was great a RAD, it was infact used a
lot in financial services for that reason.
Now I see that most commercial versions of Smalltalk have a GUI builder, but
non of the open source.
Wouldn't have a GUI building tool be a priority?
Perhaps this is already done?
best

Ichirt)

--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/GUI-construction-under-Pharo-tp4775654.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

S Krish

Re: GUI construction under Pharo

For Java ; JavaFx seems more the future for desktop UI.. Swing and SWT gets subsumed and interact well too.

Nice XML descriptor but gets fairly complex code punting for anything moderately complex UI..

But charting and the UI capabilities are significantly nicer in JavaFx overall..

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 10:39 PM, [hidden email] <[hidden email]> wrote:

There has been attempts to do that and Spec (htttp://spec.st) provides a declarative model.

The spec (check implementors of defaultSpec for a couple samples) is basically what a GUI builder would produce and use to deifne the UI.

As far as I know, VisualWorks uses such a spec approach as well. http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/main/documentation/VisualWorks/GUIDevGuide.pdf

(search for windowSpec in the text)

Frankly, for a moderately complex UI, you need to understand what's going on and I think a GUI builder isn't going to offer any benefit vs development time. The best thing I've seen is Matisse in Netbeans but it wasn't really useful for an app we wrote in Java/Swing with a lot of weird controls and interdependent fields. This is especially true when one has dynamic layouts to do. And that's why a webbrowser has a lot of advantages these days (Maybe not to write CAD software but it will come).

HTH
Phil

On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 5:40 PM, Ichiseki <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi
For what I've read and study Smalltalk was great a RAD, it was infact used a
lot in financial services for that reason.
Now I see that most commercial versions of Smalltalk have a GUI builder, but
non of the open source.
Wouldn't have a GUI building tool be a priority?
Perhaps this is already done?
best

Ichirt)

--
View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/GUI-construction-under-Pharo-tp4775654.html
Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

stepharo

Re: GUI construction under Pharo

In reply to this post by Ichiseki

On 1/9/14 17:40, Ichiseki wrote:
> Hi
> For what I've read and study Smalltalk was great a RAD, it was infact used a
> lot in financial services for that reason.
Smalltalk is still used!.
JPMorgan, globalFoundries (AMD 64), LAMRC, MMA

> Now I see that most commercial versions of Smalltalk have a GUI builder, but
> non of the open source.
> Wouldn't have a GUI building tool be a priority?
It could.
Now we have a new object format that will speed up everything and 64
bits and many many
other.

Gary have a nice UIBuilder but it is private.
So we will get there.

> Perhaps this is already done?
> best
>
> Ichiro
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/GUI-construction-under-Pharo-tp4775654.html
> Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>