Summary

Just to summarise what we should be looking at (IMHO):

Alain Plantec's Miro http://www.squeaksource.com/Miro/
Juan Vuletich http://www.jvuletich.org/Morphic3/TheFutureOfTheGUI_01.html
(the site appears to be suffering from entropy...)
Sig's OpenGL canvas (can be Googled, will let Sig let us know...)
The SqueakGTK project http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6043 (older:
http://www.squeaksource.com/Gtk/)
Areithfa Ffenestri http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3862

The dev thread on "menu standards"
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-April/127706.htm
l (is "underthreaded" as I like to consider things, so not too visible on
web-based-thread feeds)

Worth a look at the dev thread on SeasideXUL too...
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-April/127757.htm
l


Any omissions (have probably forgot one or two myself) welcome to be
added...

Regards,
Gary.

_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

>
> The dev thread on "menu standards"
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-April/
> 127706.htm
> l (is "underthreaded" as I like to consider things, so not too visible on
> web-based-thread feeds)
>

sorry, direct link doesn't work.
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-April/ then
search for "Chaotic menu"

> Worth a look at the dev thread on SeasideXUL too...
> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-April/
> 127757.htm
> l
>

sorry, direct link doesn't work.
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-April/ then
search for "SeasideXUL"

_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

Hi folks,

I'm sure my site is not updated often, and there's a lot to elaborate
there, but anyway. What does "suffering from entropy" mean?

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

Gary Chambers wrote:
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

On Apr 16, 2008, at 00:52 , Gary Chambers wrote:

> Just to summarise what we should be looking at (IMHO):
>
> [...]
>
> Any omissions (have probably forgot one or two myself) welcome to be
> added...

IMHO, what I would appreciate most is to have a more responsive GUI.

Sometimes its annoying that opening a window or updating a pane takes  
forever (i.e., half a second ;)). If you compare to an old Squeak  
version , say 3.2, you see what I mean. Personally, I would do without  
some eye candy just to make it faster (I already have turned off the  
effects).

Cheers,
Adrian
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

Just that some of the graphics for the "tabs" near the top of the page seem
to be missing for me.

Glad you're still working on things :-)

Gary

127706.htm
> l (is "underthreaded" as I like to consider things, so not too visible on
> web-based-thread feeds)
>
> Worth a look at the dev thread on SeasideXUL too...
>
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008-April/127757.htm
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

Oh, yes. I broke that. I will fix it. Thanks.

BTW, Morphic 3 is not advancing much right now, but I'll spend a
significant amount of time on it during the second half of this year.
Hopefully it will reach a "usable" state.

Cheers,
Juan Vuletich

_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

On Tue, Apr 15, 2008 at 11:52 PM, Gary Chambers
<[hidden email]> wrote:
It might also be worth finding out some more about Gilad Bracha's work
on Newspeak. He's got a very slick interface built on top of Squeak,
using two frameworks - "Brazil" widget framework and "Hopscotch"
application framework. He discussed them briefly in passing during the
talk linked to at
http://news.squeak.org/2008/04/19/video-of-newspeak-lecture-now-available/
- I think he's still working to persuade the sponsors to allow the
code to be open-sourced, but there may be a useful discussion to be
had in the meantime.
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 1:46 PM, Michael Davies
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>  It might also be worth finding out some more about Gilad Bracha's work
>  on Newspeak. He's got a very slick interface built on top of Squeak,
>  using two frameworks - "Brazil" widget framework and "Hopscotch"
>  application framework. He discussed them briefly in passing during the
>  talk linked to at
>  http://news.squeak.org/2008/04/19/video-of-newspeak-lecture-now-available/
>  - I think he's still working to persuade the sponsors to allow the
>  code to be open-sourced, but there may be a useful discussion to be
>  had in the meantime.

I'll be happy to de-lurk and tell more Brazil and Hopscotch. What
would you like to find out? I'll give a talk specifically about those
frameworks at Smalltalk Solutions this June and possibly elsewhere
sometime later.

But to have the expectations right from the start--you have to realize
that Brazil and Hopscotch are frameworks for and in Newspeak. Squeak
is a host at the moment and Morphic is treated by Brazil as one of the
native UIs it maps to, but you can't just transplant the frameworks
into a Squeak image. Also, while Squeak is a host at the moment, it
does not have to stay this way forever.

At the moment, interoperability between the two languages is possible,
but it is not a goal in itself. A plain Squeak program in the same
image could build a Brazil UI. Hopscoth, on the other hand, is
definitely best used in Newspeak. I expect that after my next redesign
it will become even more Newspeak-specific. That is to say, I myself
am not sure how directly useful both are for the future of Squeak UI.
(And then if you ask me, I don't think that the biggest problem with
the Squeak UI is dearth of UI frameworks, much as I believe that
Brazil and Hopscotch are The Right Thing :).

Cheers,

--Vassili
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

Hi Vassili,

Thanks for responding - I think your name was mentioned in the talk,
but I couldn't find it when I went back to search, so apologies for
not giving you credit.

>  I'll give a talk specifically about those
>  frameworks at Smalltalk Solutions this June and possibly elsewhere
>  sometime later.

I look forward to that - your work looks very interesting.

>  But to have the expectations right from the start--you have to realize
>  that Brazil and Hopscotch are frameworks for and in Newspeak.

Yes, I should have made that clearer. I think the value in any
discussion would be in understanding the design decisions you are
making, how you're implementing them, and what's driving them.

>  And then if you ask me, I don't think that the biggest problem with
>  the Squeak UI is dearth of UI frameworks

Perhaps "dearth of robust, attractive UI frameworks in active
development" would have been nearer the mark until recently? Now
though, as Gary's email indicated, there are a number of lines of work
proceeding, and it would be useful to ensure that there's
cross-fertilisation between these efforts. The presence of the UI
mailing list is a good start in that direction.

>  much as I believe that Brazil and Hopscotch are The Right Thing :).

:-)

I wonder if you could answer a couple of questions to help my
understanding of your work? I'll understand if you're unable to do so
at present.

What are your usage scenarios for Newspeak that are making UI
development a priority at such an early stage in the development of
the language?
Could you explain the relationship between Brazil and Hopscotch, and
the division of responsibilities between them?

Thanks,
Michael
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

Hi Michael,

On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 5:38 AM, Michael Davies
<[hidden email]> wrote:
>
>  What are your usage scenarios for Newspeak that are making UI
>  development a priority at such an early stage in the development of
>  the language?

Gilad mentioned at various points in the talk that Newspeak exists in
the context of a larger application project. This was the reason why
development started with Squeak and not as "come back in two years and
we'll have a platform for you", and also why there was the need for a
GUI early on. Plus of course, it was clear from the start that the
classic Smalltalk browser model was not scalable enough for nested
classes, so without a UI story it would be life with source files in
Emacs.

>  Could you explain the relationship between Brazil and Hopscotch, and
>  the division of responsibilities between them?

Brazil could be described as an abstract widget and layout framework.
Abstract because the objects you normally work with as the framework
user are some generic constructs materialized behind the scenes as
artifacts of the host OS UI. (Morphic is also treated as a host UI,
and the browser you saw in the demo was in fact made of morphs even
though it wasn't coded in Morphic). As an example, a Brazil Button has
attributes such as the label, the enabled/disabled state, and the
action to invoke when it is pressed. When its container window opens
in Morphic, you get a SystemWindow morph a SimpleButtonMorph inside.
When the same window opens in Windows, you get a native window with a
native Windows button control in it. A UI can be dynamically unmapped
from one host and remapped to the other, retaining any important
state. This makes a neat demo, but is also pretty much a requirement
if you want to support image-based development and allow saving an
image on one OS and opening it on another.

Brazil also manages widget layout, using what's essentially a
capability-based model, which is interesting but best explained
separately. The layout is always computed by Brazil, be it in Windows
which has no layout mechanism of its own or in Morphic which does.

Hopscotch is the application framework and the browser. I myself make
no distinction between the two--at least not to the point of coming up
with separate names--as I've been working on the framework and the
browser together from the start. But strictly speaking they are two
separate things, Hopscotch-the-framework and Hopscotch-the-browser.

The purpose of the framework is to allow expressing and managing
assemblies of widgets that serve a particular purpose. The purpose is
usually to present and manipulate some domain objects, so the
framework is essentially domain-UI glue plus some common UI tools such
as the document model and navigation facilities. That's kind of it in
the most general sense. There are various interesting points about the
way Hopscotch does it, and I plan to eventually tell about it in
detail on my blog and other venues, but it's a little too early yet.
But one interesting point is that similar to how Brazil UIs can
manifest themselves as widgets of different host systems, a Hopscotch
application could be rendered by an underlying widget layer other than
Brazil. For example, it would be possible to run Hopscotch (the
browser/IDE) in a web browser by teaching Hopscotch (the framework)
how to represent itself as ajaxy html. For now this is only a
possibility, but the architecture has hooks to allow things like that.

Cheers,

--Vassili
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

Thanks for the detailed response Vassili. There's lots of interesting
stuff in there, and as you say, the ability to dynamically re-map the
UI onto different host environments must make for a very impressive
demo!

I look forward to seeing future updates to your blog on this topic
(http://blog.3plus4.org/ right?).

Cheers,
Michael
_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui

Looks like exactly the kind of thing I envisaged, though with a possible
mix-n-match approach to the ui construction with fallback options for
unavailable targets.

Gary.

_______________________________________________
UI mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ui