Spec vs Brick vs Glamour vs Morphic vs WTF?

Ok! I'm really confused. I'm wanting to write new GUI and I have no idea which framework to use. There is very little documentation on any of these and I don't see a clear cut statement of direction as to where the Pharo community is heading.

Can someone please advise?

Thanks.

On 06/07/2016 15:43, Brad Selfridge wrote: Hi,

From what I know:

Morphic is the low level layer behind GUI in Pharo. Since this is low
level there is usually some framework on top for users to use.

Spec is a framework to build GUI.

Brick is a work in progress. There is a project call Bloc that will
replace Morphic in the future. Brick is a layer on top of Bloc to build
widgets on top of Bloc.

Glamour is good to use if you work a lot with some flux of data. Each
elements of a Glamour panel will be feed by data from another element.
It is good to use when you have, for example, elements to update on a
list selection or thing like that.

I hope this will help you to make your choice.

So Morphic will vanish in few years. Bloc and brick will replace it. I
think there is a Moose book with a Glamour chapter. And the community is
writing a book on spec I think.

>
> -----
> Brad Selfridge
> --
> View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178.html
> Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>

--
Cyril Ferlicot

http://www.synectique.eu

165 Avenue Bretagne
Lille 59000 France

So, once Brick/Bloc become public, will it become the default UI framework? What happens to Spec and Glamour when/if that happens?

Hi Brad,

to clarify the situation: Spec is the standard UI framework for Pharo, and the plan is that it will stay this way. Morphic/Brick/Block/… are (or will be) a layer underneath that, which ideally you would not need care about.

The documentation of Spec is not up to date right now, and hard to find. But the good news is that I am working on it this very week (and next week). Please hang tight for a few more days, I will publicly release a work-in-progress documentation soon. For now, you can have a look at the youtube video of my presentation at the Pharo days 2 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL23s9ZUIR0 it should already point you in the right direction.

--
Does this mail seem too brief? Sorry for that, I don’t mean to be rude! Please see http://emailcharter.org .

Johan Fabry   -   http://pleiad.cl/~jfabry
PLEIAD and RyCh labs  -  Computer Science Department (DCC)  -  University of Chile

Hi,

Just to share my experience as a newbie with Pharo/Smalltalk and how I
deal with the diversity of graphical toolkits, which in my case was
pretty problem related.

I want to create some kind of "app"[1][2] that used trees as structuring
metaphor for interactive documents. The easiest way to program it was
using Glamour and this gave me a quick functional prototype, but when I
started to stretch the functionality even more Glamour, showed it
limitations and in that case, spec and particularly Johan's spec-glamour
bridge, has been really empowering for more general interfaces, without
loosing the interactivity part given by GT playgrounds. Still there is a
lot of work to be done and after finishing the Pharo MOOC I will be
retaking my project again, but I would tell that spec is a solid toolkit
and your choice doesn't need to be binary. You can start with one
toolkit, like in my case and combine with other or refactor the code to
migrate functionality. If you have enough time (for example don't have
any rush for a quick & dirty prototype), I would advice to start with
spec with the tranquility that it will be there in the time to come, and
that the bindings with Glamour, Bloc, Brick and Morphic, will let you
extent the interface when the need arises.


[1] http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Offray/Grafoscopio
[2] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html

Cheers,

Offray

On 06/07/16 11:11, Johan Fabry wrote:

Thank you all for your responses. I have to admit that I was really confused.

I will start the process with Spec.

You are aware of SpecGenerator?

Stephan

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 7:45 AM, Stephan Eggermont <[hidden email]> wrote:
> You are aware of SpecGenerator?
>
> Stephan
>

First time I've heard of it.  Could you describe it?
cheers -ben

Ben wrote:
> First time I've heard of it.  Could you describe it?

Creating simple CRUD tables and forms with text fields and to-1
references to other
tables. In Pharo 6 doesn't need the SelectEntity widget, as that is
already loaded.

http://forum.world.st/ANN-SpecGenerator-easy-CRUD-applications-with-Spec-td4889624.html

Stephan

On Thu, Jul 7, 2016 at 5:41 PM, stephan <[hidden email]> wrote:

cool. thanks for the link.
cheers -ben

Stephan,

I watched your video. Very cool. I'm really interested in you code generation process. What I'm working on will also require generating Smalltalk classes and methods from a Spec GUI. I do not want to auto-generate a GUI, but non-GUI classes only. It would be nice not to have to reinvent the wheel again. If that's possible.

I am still working on Pharo 4.0. Are there instructions on how to import your code? Or, is it not available at this time?

Thanks,

You can find it on smalltalkhub StephanEggermont/SpecGenerator. In Pharo4 you'll miss spec updates, you'll need to add at least the FastTable based list and the SelectEntity widget.

Code generation is straightforward, and should be refactored

Stephan

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