Question about Morphic in Pharo 4

I can't resist adding my pennyworth to this discussion. The ST vision was to empower "children of all ages"  to master their own programs. This gives me an imperative discriminator for all my work:  Am I making the programs more readable? If not, don't do it.

I have been programming Smalltalk since 1978 starting with ST76, ST78, ST80, and VisualWorks. VW evolved steadily into greater complexity, thus moving away from the goal.  Squeak emerged as a new beginning, but I am much afraid that I again see a steady movement away from the goal towards increasing complexity. I regret it, because I believe the original goal is well worth pursuing. (I'll soon be transferring to Pharo, hoping I'll find what I'm looking for  there).

Example: The first thing I have always done when moving to a new ST dialect is to modify SystemWindow. The system default has been to open a new window with default size and more or less random position. My personal preference is to retain control and open  it in Rectangle fromUser. This has always been very easy to achieve with a small modification of a SystemWindow class method. I am now in the process of moving from Squeak 3.10 to 4.5. I have spent several unsuccessful hours trying to add my fix. I find a new layer of runtime Spec code between me and the SystemWindow. I fail to see how this can make the code easier to master. I think I have read somewhere that this automatically generated code is not even intended for human consumption.

This seems to me to be a great pity and an opportunity lost. Much  of the Morphic complexity may be essential because it is caused by its great power and flexibility, but user/programmers need to be protected from this complexity.  Not by hiding Morphic, but by helping the user/programmer create code for it. Wouldn't it be great if something like Spec were an IDE that generated exemplary Morphic code?  Leverage implies rigidity, so there would be different Specs for different purposes. One for property sheets, one for tables, etc.  I currently need to create a property sheet but am not looking forward to the Morphic chore. I know that the resulting code should be simple, but I also know that it will take me a very long time to find it. Wouldn't it be nice if I could create my property sheet through a simple Spect tool. Afterwards, I could read the generated Morphic code and say: Aha! So that's how I should have done it.

Just a dream.
--Trygve

On 20 Dec 2014, at 13:44, Sean P. DeNigris [hidden email] wrote:

kilon.alios wrote

even if continue to use Spec I will stiil have to rely on Morphic
since custom GUIs is really important for me.

Yes, that's why they can not be compared:
Morphic = make and understand any UI
Spec = make common business UIs easily (on top of a general framework like
Morphic)

but that’s not completely true because in that case Morphic should be just the “graphic atoms” while spec should provide a set of widgets (made with those atoms), when what actually happens is that Morphic is everything: the atoms, the widgets, layers ever those widgets and even theming, etc.  So… is not correctly designed. Or better said: it has evolved in a way that now needs a massive reengineering to make it right. 
And Spec, instead being a set of widgets with a declarative way to compose them, is yet another layer on top of other layers. 

cheers, 
Esteban

Hi daniel,

I do not have the time to go too much into the details.
Now orginal Morphic made mistake (global coordinates is one).

What is important for us:
     - cleaning the current version (we made a lot of progress with
FrameLayout and others)
     - untangling polymorph
     - migrating to athens may be better to build on Bloc but we will
see (note that Bloc is fully vectorial now since a couple of days)
     - supporting themes correctly
     - identifying and improving widgets
     - UIBuilder theme with all the widgets creation in this class is a
bad pattern. Each widget should have its API in its class!
     - cleaning Spec (we should handle the announcement plague)
     - in parallel prepare the future with Bloc.
             - I'm currently reading code and adding new class comments
             - preparing a tutorial
             - checking the widget we built

Stef

Not really we need a way to express and reuse logic. This is what we saw
with alain so we will valueholder and may be spec to compose widgets
but we will see.
> - Even as a layer, Spec still does not has much sense without:
> -- a rebuild of the descriptive model
-- shrinking of the api
-- cleaning of announcement mess
> -- an UI builder to use it.

yes

Le 19/12/14 17:53, nacho a écrit :
> Esteban,
> I agree 100%.
> In fact that was, in part, the reason of my question. As I don't see a Spec
> UI coming soon I was wondering if perhaps Morphic will be trimmed in Pharo
> 4.
No
Now have a look at Bloc in AlainPlantec/Bloc

Le 20/12/14 13:44, Sean P. DeNigris a écrit :
> kilon.alios wrote
>> even if continue to use Spec I will stiil have to rely on Morphic
>> since custom GUIs is really important for me.
> Yes, that's why they can not be compared:
> Morphic = make and understand any UI
This is not the case from my experience fighting with morphic.

Thanks Johan for taking the time to answer all of this…

Cheers,
Alexandre


--
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Alexandre Bergel  http://www.bergel.eu
^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;._,.;:~^~:;.

<quote author="stepharo">

>No
>Now have a look at Bloc in AlainPlantec/Bloc

Thanks Stef,
Where I can find about Bloc??
I want to take a look at it!
cheers

stepharo wrote

> Morphic = make and understand any UI
This is not the case from my experience fighting with morphic.

Agreed, of course ;) We were talking about intention, not implementation. In what little experience I have, I think that statement would be true full stop for Self's Morphic.

stepharo wrote
>>> Morphic = make and understand any UI
>> This is not the case from my experience fighting with morphic.
> Agreed, of course ;) We were talking about intention, not implementation.

:) but I live in reality not dreams :)

Look for AlainPlantec/Bloc on smalltalk hub.

Le 23/12/14 14:34, nacho a écrit :