Using Amber to program graphics interactively

Hi! I am new to Amber, and to Smalltalk. I'm looking forward to learning it, but I'm trying to understand what can be achieved, and what might be a suitable learning project.

I was very impressed to see this well-structured javascript animation framework: http://labs.hyperandroid.com/static/caat/

Would this translate well into Amber? Would it then enable me to code graphics interactively, seeing the results as I create objects?

If so, this could be a very powerful and enjoyable way to play with programming and graphics. But are there other intentions in that direction for Amber, such as implementing the 'Morph'-style graphics of Pharo (forgive my ignorance here).

I'd appreciate any opinions.

nally find the object model of CAAT easier to grasp and intuitively more appealing.

The idea is indeed to be able to use js libs without any glue at all. The nodejs examples (TrivialServer for example) do this for example. There is one detail that is a non obvious trick and that is how we call js function foo(x, y) and we do it like this:

someObject foo: x bar: y

...where bar could have been banana: or whatever. ;)

We should make a wiki page about these things.

regards, Göran

-- Sent from my Palm Pre 2, wohoo!

---

On Nov 25, 2011 18:56, Chris Marsh <[hidden email]> wrote:

Thanks for the encouragement. This was the bit I haven't grasped - I thought I'd have to create interface classes and methods to call the JavaScript functions. But it's transparent? How do the arguments map? Sorry for the obvious questions, but I've looked through the Group, and on on the site, and have missed the explanation of how this works.

On Fri, 2011-11-25 at 14:02 -0500, Andy Burnett wrote:
> Thanks for the example Göran, I was struggling to get my head about
> how that was done.
>
>
> Could you do one other act of simplification for me? I would like to
> see the simplest possible example - in Amber - of how one would load a
> JS library - assume it is one that google, or someone, hosts. And,
> then call one of its functions.

Hi!

You can simply load it in the head of the page. To call it, here's an
example with the jQuery library.

Call the global jQuery function (which is in fact attached to window):

in JS:
jQuery('div')
or:
window.jQuery('div')

in Amber:
window jQuery: 'div'

if in amber you do:
Transcript show: jQuery

you'll see that jQuery is a block closure (a function in JS). This means
you can also do:

jQuery value: 'div'

While it's not really elegant, it can help you understand the
relationship between Amber and JavaScript.

Also note that amber allows you to inspect, print, etc JavaScript
objects like if they were Smalltalk objects.

Cheers,
Nico

>
>
> Cheers
> Andy
>
> 2011/11/25 Göran Krampe <[hidden email]>
>         The idea is indeed to be able to use js libs without any glue
>         at all. The nodejs examples (TrivialServer for example) do
>         this for example. There is one detail that is a non obvious
>         trick and that is how we call js function foo(x, y) and we do
>         it like this:
>
>         someObject foo: x bar: y
>
>         ...where bar could have been banana: or whatever. ;)
>
>         We should make a wiki page about these things.
>
>         regards, Göran
>
>
>
>         -- Sent from my Palm Pre 2, wohoo!
>
>
>         ______________________________________________________________
>         On Nov 25, 2011 18:56, Chris Marsh <[hidden email]>
>         wrote:
>
>
>         Thanks for the encouragement. This was the bit I haven't
>         grasped - I thought I'd have to create interface classes and
>         methods to call the JavaScript functions. But it's
>         transparent? How do the arguments map? Sorry for the obvious
>         questions, but I've looked through the Group, and on on the
>         site, and have missed the explanation of how this works.
>
>