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The future of UI, especially the grid

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Christian Haider

The future of UI, especially the grid

Hi all,

it has been very quiet in the last 4 years after Widgetry was forced out of existence. I think that after more than 4 years, it is time to reassess the situation.

There were promises that a different approach would be better (FOR THE CUSTOMERS). Original quote from James Robertson (who has been dismissed in the meantime) in the official kill-widgetry-announcement of 9/11 2007:

> New and better widgets, incorporating some of the enhancements made in Widgetry
> Improved UI building tools - the painter tools will get updated and improved incrementally
> Improvements to the framework itself - many of the known issues in the underlying UI libraries will be incrementally addressed

After more than 4 years, what did we get? (remember Widgetry took only 6 years!)

New widgets? Panel, ClickableGraphic, VisualRow and ~Stack – all of or below the complexity of a button… I guess that one has to start somewhere. Maybe in a couple of years we will get InputFields in Toolbars? Wow!

Better widgets? None! There has been a bit of cleanup with the keyboardProcessor – highly welcomed! And a bit of Tooltip work, without new features at the usage level (is it soooo difficult to have Tooltips for items which do not fit in a ListView or DataSet. Is it impossible in this framework to implement list item tooltips?).

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

What has improved in the UI building tools? Nothing as far as I know – but I am not using it much.

Improvements of the framework? Hardly visible – it is so sad.

Of course, I forgot the Grid. Released very unfinished as panic reaction as preview in 7.6. Changed a bit until 7.8. In 7.8 it does not work (crash in first example). Since then it seems abandoned – no more work has been done on it. The Grid is not used for the tools of VW – although the requirements are not that high for the Process Monitor and the File dialogs…

What is the plan here? Is there a plan/a roadmap/some goal/some timeframe? What is going on?

I thought that the Grid was top priority for new widgets.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI. That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications. Maybe the web with VW as server is the direction where Cincom is heading? But after the now failed WebVelocity idea, and the much more attractive options for newcomers (GLASS), this is not very likely. Leaves VW as server product for relational database applications without UIs (batch processing of DB chores seems ideally suited).

Maybe Cincom does not have a plan... The strategy may be to just invest the minimal amount (only specific ARs which get integrated only when the complaining customer sends the solution with it) until the demand for this UI business vanishes.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

What are the options?

1. use TableView. Never used it, seems very limited (no direct-editing, but can be drag source), not used by VW itself.

2. use DataSet. Limited, no drag-n-drop, bad code, brittle.

3. use Aragon. Subclassed DataSet with more features and drag-n-drop, works, but rots and is not maintained (see below) – I want it out of my code.

4. use the new Grid. Buggy, unfinished, not supported, abandoned.

5. use Widgetry. Works great with all features, but has this one nasty bug (see below) and is not maintained

6. use a commercial ActiveX control. Feature rich, tested, maintained, but only for windows (ok with me) and difficult to integrate, since the VW COM implementation is at least as bad as the UI framework…

7. rewrite the UI to use a C library like wxWidgets. Massive investment and the need to either have an installer to add the libraries or bind them statically to the VM.

8. rewrite the UI in JavaScript for the browser and use Seaside or AIDA as UI framework. Massive investment to move the whole UI out of VW – maybe the only long-term option. That would make it also easier to move away from VW completely…

9. write it all myself in Smalltalk. Most expensive – cannot do it.

Options 1 to 4 don’t seem viable, since Cincom isn’t working on the UI.

5. would be the best, if I just could find this one bug… This would give me an advantage over Cincom of at least 10 years even if they get their act together. (I need to give it another shot…)

I don’t like 6. and 7. since I would depend on external closed libraries.

Which leaves 8 as the only long term option? There, one depends on unripe JavaScript libraries and has to take care of browser incompatibilities. Maybe OK with Amber?

What do you think?

Disappointed,

Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery

I use the Aragon NewDataSet in my products. But is not maintained properly and bit rot has made it more a liability that an asset. There are undeclareds, bugs which need to be overwritten or subclassed to fix, these horrible Aliases in the Smalltalk namespace. I always shied away from fixing those in public, because I guess that some projects depend on it for older versions. Since Store does not offer any support for version dependent selections (what is compatible to what), I did not want to introduce non-backward compatible changes. In short: I would love to have an alternative to Aragon.

P.P.P.S. About that strange Widgetry bug

When there is a walkback in the display code (also the aspect accessors of cells and the code behind it (often business code)), the image freezes, a debugger comes up, but doesn’t display itself and you can only get out of it by a non-reproducible combination of opening the process monitor which does not respond, hitting the break-key… Sometimes you can get out of this situation, but I never found the cause. If this rings a bell with anybody, please give me a hint.

I cannot risk this in my deployed products. When this happens, there is nothing a user can do except to kill the program. This is not acceptable.

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Janko Mivšek

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

Hi,

I'd like some statement from Cincom too, on both GUI and general
direction. Otherwise we will start to believe that VW is actually in
"maintenance mode" only.

Cincom will certainly say that this is actually good, just look at
databases Total ans Supra, those are maintained by them eternally, but,
well...

Best regards
Janko

S, Christian Haider piše:

> Hi all,
>
>
>
> it has been very quiet in the last 4 years after Widgetry was forced out
> of existence. I think that after more than 4 years, it is time to
> reassess the situation.
>
>
>
> There were promises that a different approach would be better (FOR THE
> CUSTOMERS). Original quote from James Robertson (who has been dismissed
> in the meantime) in the official kill-widgetry-announcement of 9/11 2007:
>
>> New and better widgets, incorporating some of the enhancements made in
> Widgetry
>> Improved UI building tools - the painter tools will get updated and
> improved incrementally
>> Improvements to the framework itself - many of the known issues in the
> underlying UI libraries will be incrementally addressed
>
>
>
> After more than 4 years, what did we get? (remember Widgetry took only 6
> years!)
>
>
>
> New widgets? Panel, ClickableGraphic, VisualRow and ~Stack – all of or
> below the complexity of a button… I guess that one has to start
> somewhere. Maybe in a couple of years we will get InputFields in
> Toolbars? Wow!
>
>
>
> Better widgets? None! There has been a bit of cleanup with the
> keyboardProcessor – highly welcomed! And a bit of Tooltip work, without
> new features at the usage level (is it soooo difficult to have Tooltips
> for items which do not fit in a ListView or DataSet. Is it impossible in
> this framework to implement list item tooltips?).
>
>
>
> Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????
>
>
>
> What has improved in the UI building tools? Nothing as far as I know –
> but I am not using it much.
>
>
>
> Improvements of the framework? Hardly visible – it is so sad.
>
>
>
> Of course, I forgot the Grid. Released very unfinished as panic reaction
> as preview in 7.6. Changed a bit until 7.8. In 7.8 it does not work
> (crash in first example). Since then it seems abandoned – no more work
> has been done on it. The Grid is not used for the tools of VW – although
> the requirements are not that high for the Process Monitor and the File
> dialogs…
>
> What is the plan here? Is there a plan/a roadmap/some goal/some
> timeframe? What is going on?
>
>
>
> I thought that the Grid was top priority for new widgets.
>
>
>
> What is the conclusion?
>
>
>
> I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does
> not want to invest in the UI. That means that Cincom is abandoning the
> market of desktop applications. Maybe the web with VW as server is the
> direction where Cincom is heading? But after the now failed WebVelocity
> idea, and the much more attractive options for newcomers (GLASS), this
> is not very likely. Leaves VW as server product for relational database
> applications without UIs (batch processing of DB chores seems ideally
> suited).
>
>
>
> Maybe Cincom does not have a plan... The strategy may be to just invest
> the minimal amount (only specific ARs which get integrated only when the
> complaining customer sends the solution with it) until the demand for
> this UI business vanishes.
>
>
>
> What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing
> UIs with VW?
>
>
>
> What are the options?
>
> 1. use TableView. Never used it, seems very limited (no direct-editing,
> but can be drag source), not used by VW itself.
>
> 2. use DataSet. Limited, no drag-n-drop, bad code, brittle.
>
> 3. use Aragon. Subclassed DataSet with more features and drag-n-drop,
> works, but rots and is not maintained (see below) – I want it out of my
> code.
>
> 4. use the new Grid. Buggy, unfinished, not supported, abandoned.
>
> 5. use Widgetry. Works great with all features, but has this one nasty
> bug (see below) and is not maintained
>
> 6. use a commercial ActiveX control. Feature rich, tested, maintained,
> but only for windows (ok with me) and difficult to integrate, since the
> VW COM implementation is at least as bad as the UI framework…
>
> 7. rewrite the UI to use a C library like wxWidgets. Massive investment
> and the need to either have an installer to add the libraries or bind
> them statically to the VM.
>
> 8. rewrite the UI in JavaScript for the browser and use Seaside or AIDA
> as UI framework. Massive investment to move the whole UI out of VW –
> maybe the only long-term option. That would make it also easier to move
> away from VW completely…
>
> 9. write it all myself in Smalltalk. Most expensive – cannot do it.
>
>
>
> Options 1 to 4 don’t seem viable, since Cincom isn’t working on the UI.
>
> 5. would be the best, if I just could find this one bug… This would give
> me an advantage over Cincom of at least 10 years even if they get their
> act together. (I need to give it another shot…)
>
> I don’t like 6. and 7. since I would depend on external closed libraries.
>
> Which leaves 8 as the only long term option? There, one depends on
> unripe JavaScript libraries and has to take care of browser
> incompatibilities. Maybe OK with Amber?
>
>
>
> What do you think?
>
>
>
> Disappointed,
>
> Christian
>
>
>
> P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…
>
>
>
> P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
>
> I use the Aragon NewDataSet in my products. But is not maintained
> properly and bit rot has made it more a liability that an asset. There
> are undeclareds, bugs which need to be overwritten or subclassed to fix,
> these horrible Aliases in the Smalltalk namespace. I always shied away
> from fixing those in public, because I guess that some projects depend
> on it for older versions. Since Store does not offer any support for
> version dependent selections (what is compatible to what), I did not
> want to introduce non-backward compatible changes. In short: I would
> love to have an alternative to Aragon.
>
>
>
> P.P.P.S. About that strange Widgetry bug
>
> When there is a walkback in the display code (also the aspect accessors
> of cells and the code behind it (often business code)), the image
> freezes, a debugger comes up, but doesn’t display itself and you can
> only get out of it by a non-reproducible combination of opening the
> process monitor which does not respond, hitting the break-key… Sometimes
> you can get out of this situation, but I never found the cause. If this
> rings a bell with anybody, please give me a hint.
>
> I cannot risk this in my deployed products. When this happens, there is
> nothing a user can do except to kill the program. This is not acceptable.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> vwnc mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc

--
Janko Mivšek
Aida/Web
Smalltalk Web Application Server
http://www.aidaweb.si
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Reinout Heeck-2

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by Christian Haider

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
        (we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
        I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
        Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,

Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

_______________________________________________
vwnc mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc

giorgiof

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

HI,

Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will take care...

UI is still important nowadays.

ciao

Giorgio

BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...

And about restarting Widgetry???

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
        (we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
        I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
        Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,

                Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

_______________________________________________
vwnc mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc

_______________________________________________
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[hidden email]
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Carl Gundel-2

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

Restart Widgetry? Would love to see it. Not holding my breath. :-\

-Carl Gundel

Liberty BASIC for Windows - http://www.libertybasic.com

Run BASIC, easy web programming - http://www.runbasic.com

On Dec 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, giorgio ferraris <[hidden email]> wrote:

HI,

Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will take care...
UI is still important nowadays.

ciao

Giorgio

BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...

And about restarting Widgetry???

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
        (we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
        I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
        Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,

                Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

_______________________________________________
vwnc mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc

_______________________________________________
vwnc mailing list
[hidden email]
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc

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jarober

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

Working on the other side of this (as a customer), I see even more clearly why Widgetry was probably not the right answer. Not due to any inherent flaws; more due to the value proposition. Consider the (large, mission critical) UI app I work on now - what value does Widgetry have for us? Negative, probably. Work on that would mean that any chance of improvements to the existing UI framework would halt. Would we migrate to Widgetry? Probably not; such a move by Cincom would likely kick off a serious internal examination of a migration to other tools and languages. Why, you ask? Because a move from what we have to Widgetry (or anything not compatible) would be huge, and open the door for alternatives.

On Dec 5, 2011, at 2:17 PM, Carl Gundel wrote:

Restart Widgetry? Would love to see it. Not holding my breath. :-\

-Carl Gundel
Liberty BASIC for Windows - http://www.libertybasic.com
Run BASIC, easy web programming - http://www.runbasic.com

On Dec 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, giorgio ferraris <[hidden email]> wrote:

HI,

Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will take care...
UI is still important nowadays.

ciao

Giorgio

BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...

And about restarting Widgetry???

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck <[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
        (we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
        I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
        Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,
                Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

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vwnc mailing list
[hidden email][hidden email]
http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc

_______________________________________________
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_______________________________________________
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James Robertson

http://www.jarober.com

[hidden email]

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stephane ducasse-2

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

This story tends to prove what we believe with marcus: evolution step by step is the only way. Continously improving. Now from time to time
to improve we have to have regression steps or larger improvements. So nothing really easy but step by step steadily.

Stef

> Working on the other side of this (as a customer), I see even more clearly why Widgetry was probably not the right answer. Not due to any inherent flaws; more due to the value proposition. Consider the (large, mission critical) UI app I work on now - what value does Widgetry have for us? Negative, probably. Work on that would mean that any chance of improvements to the existing UI framework would halt. Would we migrate to Widgetry? Probably not; such a move by Cincom would likely kick off a serious internal examination of a migration to other tools and languages. Why, you ask? Because a move from what we have to Widgetry (or anything not compatible) would be huge, and open the door for alternatives.
>

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Andres Valloud-6

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

IMO, there should be special emphasis in achieving less coupling of the
resulting smaller pieces so you enable others making small pieces and
then they can play too, plus you have less maintenance homework on
monolithic chunks of software.

Linus Torvalds used to argue that monolithic kernels were just as well
when compared to microkernels. Except now, ~15 years later, even Linus
accepts that the code that become much more complicated and bloated...

On 12/5/2011 1:29 PM, stephane ducasse wrote:

>
> This story tends to prove what we believe with marcus: evolution step by step is the only way. Continously improving. Now from time to time
> to improve we have to have regression steps or larger improvements. So nothing really easy but step by step steadily.
>
> Stef
>
>
>> Working on the other side of this (as a customer), I see even more clearly why Widgetry was probably not the right answer. Not due to any inherent flaws; more due to the value proposition. Consider the (large, mission critical) UI app I work on now - what value does Widgetry have for us? Negative, probably. Work on that would mean that any chance of improvements to the existing UI framework would halt. Would we migrate to Widgetry? Probably not; such a move by Cincom would likely kick off a serious internal examination of a migration to other tools and languages. Why, you ask? Because a move from what we have to Widgetry (or anything not compatible) would be huge, and open the door for alternatives.
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> vwnc mailing list
> [hidden email]
> http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/mailman/listinfo/vwnc
>

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Maarten Mostert

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by jarober

James,

So now you're on the other side, why is it that no factual progress is being made ? What does this to your furstation level as an end user ? What do you advise ?

Regards,

@+Maarten,

"James Robertson" <[hidden email]> said:

On Dec 5, 2011, at 2:17 PM, Carl Gundel wrote:

Restart Widgetry? Would love to see it. Not holding my breath. :-\

-Carl Gundel
Liberty BASIC for Windows - http://www.libertybasic.com

Run BASIC, easy web programming - http://www.runbasic.com

On Dec 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, giorgio ferraris <[hidden email]> wrote:

HI,
Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will take care...

UI is still important nowadays.

ciao

Giorgio

BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...

And about restarting Widgetry???

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck <[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
(we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,

Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery

[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

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giorgiof

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by stephane ducasse-2

yes, Stephane,

evolution step by step yes, but after 4 years I think these steps are quite slow also for a sleeping sloth...

ciao

Giorgio

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 10:29 PM, stephane ducasse <[hidden email]> wrote:

This story tends to prove what we believe with marcus: evolution step by step is the only way. Continously improving. Now from time to time
to improve we have to have regression steps or larger improvements. So nothing really easy but step by step steadily.

Stef

> Working on the other side of this (as a customer), I see even more clearly why Widgetry was probably not the right answer. Not due to any inherent flaws; more due to the value proposition. Consider the (large, mission critical) UI app I work on now - what value does Widgetry have for us? Negative, probably. Work on that would mean that any chance of improvements to the existing UI framework would halt. Would we migrate to Widgetry? Probably not; such a move by Cincom would likely kick off a serious internal examination of a migration to other tools and languages. Why, you ask? Because a move from what we have to Widgetry (or anything not compatible) would be huge, and open the door for alternatives.
>

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stephane ducasse-2

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

> yes, Stephane,
> evolution step by step yes, but after 4 years I think these steps are quite slow also for a sleeping sloth…

This is why we try to do a lot of them and as fast as we can in pharo :)

Stef

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Cesar Rabak

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by jarober

Having participated on project where similar reasoning has being brought
more than a time, I've +1 on this stance.

Em 5/12/2011 17:22, James Robertson escreveu:

--
Cesar Rabak
GNU/Linux User 52247.
Get counted: http://counter.li.org/
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Janko Mivšek

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by jarober

Such stance is understandable, but this is also prime example of
"maintenance mode" of the tool. Which is not the same as evolution. And
we all know from biology that without evolution species die out, usually
to the more vital contender.

Janko

S, James Robertson piše:

> Working on the other side of this (as a customer), I see even more
> clearly why Widgetry was probably not the right answer. Not due to any
> inherent flaws; more due to the value proposition. Consider the (large,
> mission critical) UI app I work on now - what value does Widgetry have
> for us? Negative, probably. Work on that would mean that any chance of
> improvements to the existing UI framework would halt. Would we migrate
> to Widgetry? Probably not; such a move by Cincom would likely kick off
> a serious internal examination of a migration to other tools and
> languages. Why, you ask? Because a move from what we have to Widgetry
> (or anything not compatible) would be huge, and open the door for
> alternatives.
>
>
> On Dec 5, 2011, at 2:17 PM, Carl Gundel wrote:
>
>> Restart Widgetry? Would love to see it. Not holding my breath. :-\
>>
>> -Carl Gundel
>> Liberty BASIC for Windows -
>> <http://www.libertybasic.com/>http://www.libertybasic.com
>> <http://www.libertybasic.com/>
>> Run BASIC, easy web programming -
>> <http://www.runbasic.com/>http://www.runbasic.com
>> <http://www.runbasic.com/>
>>
>> On Dec 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, giorgio ferraris
>> <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>>
>>> HI,
>>>
>>> Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this
>>> list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will
>>> take care...
>>> UI is still important nowadays.
>>>
>>> ciao
>>>
>>> Giorgio
>>>
>>> BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer
>>> moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for
>>> porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web
>>> site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...
>>>
>>> And about restarting Widgetry???
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck
>>> <<mailto:[hidden email]>[hidden email]
>>> <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:
>>>> __ __Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement
>>>> and ????
>>>
>>> "Compliance", so:
>>>
>>> -- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
>>> (we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement'
>>> because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).
>>>
>>> -- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the
>>> cursor before opening the context menu.
>>> I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my
>>> Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most
>>> important tool too :-(.
>>> Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable
>>> ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show
>>> only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra
>>> package.
>>>
>>> -- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer
>>> select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue
>>> gesturing into a submenu.
>>>
>>> __ __
>>>>
>>>> What is the conclusion?____
>>>>
>>>> __ __
>>>>
>>>> I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that
>>>> Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.
>>>>
>>> I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over
>>> their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
>>> So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above,
>>> pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing
>>> of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing
>>> keyboardprocessor etc, etc).
>>>
>>>
>>>> That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop
>>>> applications.
>>>>
>>> That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an
>>> active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like
>>> 'loosing'.
>>>
>>> __ __
>>>>
>>>> What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left
>>>> doing UIs with VW?
>>>>
>>>
>>> We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset
>>> variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely
>>> passable.
>>>
>>>> ____
>>>>
>>>> What do you think?
>>> My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow,
>>> the UI is not their only problem.
>>> Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever
>>> changing technologies they need to interface to.
>>> Nevertheless we see that they:
>>> -- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from
>>> Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
>>> -- started to work on Store
>>> -- tinkered with various dev tools
>>> -- *are* working on the UI
>>> However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished,
>>> so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving
>>> target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.
>>>
>>> I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may
>>> need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> __
>>>> __
>>>>
>>>> Disappointed,____
>>>>
>>>> Christian____
>>>>
>>>> __ __
>>>>
>>>> P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…
>>>>
>>>
>>> We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is
>>> particularly good...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> P.P.S. About the Aragon misery____
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>
>>> We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now
>>> 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility
>>> with other parties.

Dave Stevenson-3

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by jarober

I agree if a cut-over was forced to Widgetry all at once. But if both could work side by side, and if Grid were finished enough to replace DataSet, it could be done gradually. New screens could be built in Widgetry, and old screens could be ported as they presented problems not easily solved with DataSets.

Dave Stevenson
[hidden email]

From: James Robertson <[hidden email]>
To: VWNC NC <[hidden email]>
Sent: Mon, December 5, 2011 2:22:00 PM
Subject: Re: [vwnc] The future of UI, especially the grid

Working on the other side of this (as a customer), I see even more clearly why Widgetry was probably not the right answer. Not due to any inherent flaws; more due to the value proposition. Consider the (large, mission critical) UI app I work on now - what value does Widgetry have for us? Negative, probably. Work on that would mean that any chance of improvements to the existing UI framework would halt. Would we migrate to Widgetry? Probably not; such a move by Cincom would likely kick off a serious internal examination of a migration to other tools and languages. Why, you ask? Because a move from what we have to Widgetry (or anything not compatible) would be huge, and open the door for alternatives.

On Dec 5, 2011, at 2:17 PM, Carl Gundel wrote:

Restart Widgetry? Would love to see it. Not holding my breath. :-\

-Carl Gundel
Liberty BASIC for Windows - http://www.libertybasic.com/

Run BASIC, easy web programming - http://www.runbasic.com/

On Dec 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, giorgio ferraris <[hidden email]> wrote:

HI,

Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will take care...

UI is still important nowadays.

ciao

Giorgio

BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...

And about restarting Widgetry???

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck <[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
        (we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
        I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
        Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.
I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.
That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?
My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,

                Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

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James Robertson

http://www.jarober.com

[hidden email]

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Steven Kelly

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

I doubt Cincom has the resources to simultaneously maintain Wrapper and build Widgetry to completion. It doesn't sound a realistic expectation, at least not if you feel that even maintaining Wrapper alone hasn't show enough progress. If you're still hopeful, remember that for a realistic chance of long-term success for Widgetry, the VW dev tools would need to be reimplemented in it.

As for the value proposition, back in 2001 when Pollock started, we were promised 80% automatic migration of existing UIs, with 80% of the rest semi-automatic. That made things look a lot more palatable, as did the promised timescale of 18 months. If new UIs like Mac OS X and XP-Vista-7 had been built for Widgetry - and only Widgetry - migrating would have added significant value.

As it is, the biggest UI framework improvement in recent years has come from outside Cincom: Let's all take a minute to give a standing ovation to Holger Kleinsorgen for Windows7LookPolicy! Amazing work. That's not to denigrate the important progress on the graphics front below the UI level: AlphaCompositedImage, Cairo, and Windows VM multi-threaded refreshes are all things we needed and are delighted to see.

Personally, I think Widgetry has missed its window of opportunity. It was begun over 10 years ago, and UIs have changed a lot since then. Back then, everybody wanted apps to look like a native app on their own platform. Now, a sizable number want apps to look like some favourite cross-platform widget set, or then to be visually innovative.

Steve

From: [hidden email] on behalf of Dave Stevenson
Sent: Tue 06/12/2011 02:08
To: James Robertson; VWNC NC
Subject: Re: [vwnc] The future of UI, especially the grid

Dave Stevenson
[hidden email]

On Dec 5, 2011, at 2:17 PM, Carl Gundel wrote:

Restart Widgetry? Would love to see it. Not holding my breath. :-\

-Carl Gundel
Liberty BASIC for Windows - http://www.libertybasic.com/

Run BASIC, easy web programming - http://www.runbasic.com/

On Dec 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, giorgio ferraris <[hidden email]> wrote:

HI,

Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will take care...

UI is still important nowadays.

ciao

Giorgio

BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...

And about restarting Widgetry???

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck <[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
        (we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
        I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
        Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.
I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.
That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?
My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,

                Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

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James Robertson

http://www.jarober.com

[hidden email]

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jarober

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by Maarten Mostert

Actually, I would lean towards Reinout's response.

On Dec 5, 2011, at 5:04 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

James,
So now you're on the other side, why is it that no factual progress is being made ? What does this to your furstation level as an end user ? What do you advise ?
Regards,
@+Maarten,

"James Robertson" <[hidden email]> said:

Working on the other side of this (as a customer), I see even more clearly why Widgetry was probably not the right answer. Not due to any inherent flaws; more due to the value proposition. Consider the (large, mission critical) UI app I work on now - what value does Widgetry have for us? Negative, probably. Work on that would mean that any chance of improvements to the existing UI framework would halt. Would we migrate to Widgetry? Probably not; such a move by Cincom would likely kick off a serious internal examination of a migration to other tools and languages. Why, you ask? Because a move from what we have to Widgetry (or anything not compatible) would be huge, and open the door for alternatives.

On Dec 5, 2011, at 2:17 PM, Carl Gundel wrote:

Restart Widgetry? Would love to see it. Not holding my breath. :-\

-Carl Gundel
Liberty BASIC for Windows - http://www.libertybasic.com

Run BASIC, easy web programming - http://www.runbasic.com

On Dec 5, 2011, at 1:42 PM, giorgio ferraris <[hidden email]> wrote:

HI,
Hi already tried to remember Cincom about UI on several mail on this list .. so, this is to help rising the volume... hoping someone will take care...

UI is still important nowadays.

ciao

Giorgio

BTW, the way Widgetry was killed made also a big italian customer moving away from Cincom. They invested heavily on Widgetry for porting a huge VSE application to VW, and they discovered on the web site about the premature end of the project... not a nice thing...

And about restarting Widgetry???

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Reinout Heeck <[hidden email][hidden email]> wrote:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
(we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,
Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery

[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

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James Robertson

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Maarten Mostert

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by Reinout Heeck-2

Reinhout,

Basically one of the pragamagtic solution could be that they take pocession of your improved Aragan dataSetView and take things from there.

If you're willing so offcourse.

@+ Maarten,

"Reinout Heeck" <[hidden email]> said:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
(we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

Disappointed,

Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

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Reinout Heeck-2

Pushing fixes to Cincom (Re: The future of UI, especially the grid)

On 12/6/2011 1:51 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

Reinhout,

Basically one of the pragamagtic solution could be that they take pocession of your improved Aragan dataSetView and take things from there.

If you're willing so offcourse.

As it happens in this particular case we are not willing ;-)

However in the general case you do have a point: if we have fixes we probably should hand them to Cincom.

However there are costs involved, creating a fix is often the simplest bit but turning this into a support case that Cincom can handle requires significant effort on the customer side.
Then of course Cincom needs to invest into judging and integrating and testing the fix. This might trigger more back-and-forths (churn) between Cincom and the customer.

Here at Soops we are using the customer support mechanisms to push our fixes to Cincom, but would that scale if all of us here start doing that?

How does that scale in the open source world ? Anybody here knowledgeable on that?

Apropos Aragon:
1) having Cincom take ownership means putting even more on their plate.
2) it is maintained publicly (bundle 'Aragon - Community Edition') which seems to have become a grand failure.

R
-

@+ Maarten,

"Reinout Heeck" [hidden email] said:

On 12/4/2011 6:36 PM, Christian Haider wrote:

Which improvements were incorporated? A bit of Announcement and ????

"Compliance", so:

-- left clicking in a list will select but no longer deselect
(we had create a patch to revert this 'improvement' because it broke the interaction paradigm of our apps).

-- right-clicking in a list will selects whatever is under the cursor before opening the context menu.
I dislike this on my Mac at home, I dislike this on my Windoze machines at work, and now I dislike it in my most important tool too :-(.
Furthermore it interacts with the browser in undesirable ways, for instance when changing method 'visibility' to 'show only in selected package' the browser will often select an extra package.

-- submenus no longer have a default action so I can no longer select the item labeled 'Implementors' but now have to continue gesturing into a submenu.

What is the conclusion?

I guess, after all these broken promises, it is clear that Cincom does not want to invest in the UI.

I don't believe that. I'd rather believe that they are in over their head and are now facing a mountain of work they cannot scale.
So we see them nibbling at the edges (compliance mentioned above, pango, tinkering with the paragrapheditor hierarchy, disappearing of Subcanvas view, introduction of panel, rationalizing keyboardprocessor etc, etc).

That means that Cincom is abandoning the market of desktop applications.

That has been going on ever since 3.0, so I wouldn't use an active word like 'abandoning' but rather a passive one like 'loosing'.

What are other VW users doing about grids? Is there anybody left doing UIs with VW?

We rely heavily on UIs, and we use our own bastardized dataset variants (mostly based on Aragons) -- their quality is barely passable.

What do you think?

My impression is that Cincom bit off more than it can swallow, the UI is not their only problem.
Their resources seem to be barely enough to keep up with the ever changing technologies they need to interface to.
Nevertheless we see that they:
-- took ownership of the browser code (when they renamed it from Refactoring Browser to System Browser)
-- started to work on Store
-- tinkered with various dev tools
-- *are* working on the UI
However the way this is organized nothing will ever get finished, so the Browser is *still* a moving target, Store is a moving target, the UI is a moving target etc, etc.

I think this aspect of never being able to finish something may need a rethink since it affects us developers so much.

Disappointed,

Christian

P.S. I love VW, if it just had a decent UI system…

We use VW because it is the best, not because we think it is particularly good...

P.P.S. About the Aragon misery
[...]

We duplicated Aragon into our own namespace & packages. We now 'own' it internally and no longer need to consider compatibility with other parties.

R
-

--
Untitled Document

Reinout Heeck, Sr. Software Engineer

Soops - Specialists in Object Technology

Tel : +31 (0) 20 6222844
Fax : +31 (0) 20 6360827
Web: www.soops.nl

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Arden-8

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

In reply to this post by Christian Haider

Dear folks;

We have a number of UI improvements on the way;

- Skins (custom widgets with native rendering)

- "fluid positioning" layout tools for interface construction

- infrastructure updates: we try to constantly incrementally improve the ui infrastructure, so that we update it, but not so drastically that one has to look at an onerous porting effort.

Grid has been tough. While maybe not apparent we have had internal progress on the grids, but I'll let Alan comment more when he can.

Thank you for the feedback. We know grid is important, and we want to get it right.

Regards

Arden

Arden Thomas

Cincom Smalltalk Product Manager

[hidden email]

845 296 0686

Cincom Smalltalk - It makes hard things easier, the impossible, possible

"Simplicity is the Ultimate Sophistication" - Leonardo Da Vinci

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Maarten Mostert

Re: The future of UI, especially the grid

"Arden Thomas" <[hidden email]> said:

> Grid has been tough. While maybe not apparent we have had internal
> progress on the grids, but I'll let Alan comment more when he can.

Meaning ?? How when what ??

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