[Seaside] Using javascript toolkits for smalltalkers

Sebastian Sastre ssastre at seaswork.com
Mon May 14 15:40:04 UTC 2007


Lukas,

	thanks for writing. Interesting indeed. 

	I've imagined the smalltalk object would not be matching 1:1 the
javascript ones but I have no clue of what technique is that for solving
conflicts you've mention. It is well know in which domain? Javascript
developers?

	If I understood well scriptaculous smalltalk framework is about
objects that once configured they know how to print them as javascript code.
This is the serialization you are talking about right?

	cheers,	

Sebastian Sastre


> -----Mensaje original-----
> De: seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] En nombre 
> de Lukas Renggli
> Enviado el: Lunes, 14 de Mayo de 2007 03:20
> Para: Seaside - general discussion
> Asunto: Re: [Seaside] Using javascript toolkits for smalltalkers
> 
> Hi Sebastian,
> 
> >     I, as a lot of people, are using the excellent job you 
> made "mapping"
> > Scriptaculous to enjoy javascript smalltalkishly. As you 
> where able to 
> > make such a thing I wanted to ask what is your opinion about the 
> > starting point of such kind of work for other toolkits for 
> > smalltalkers. I mean, I have some years on smalltalk and 
> I'm a newbie 
> > in javascript and I want to have an idea of what to expect of the 
> > development in the formula
> > smalltalk+javascript. I know results are great, but I want to 
> > smalltalk+understand
> > more deeply the "path" to them.
> 
> first I must say that the Scriptaculous package is not 
> entirely my own work, Avi started it all back in June 2005. 
> In the beginning there was just basic AJAX functionality and 
> some effects. The evolution of Scriptaculous was a highly 
> iterative process. While I tried to add more functionality, 
> and eventually supported all the things available trough 
> JavaScript, I also had to rethink and redesign the the 
> Smalltalk object model several times to accomodate new needs.
> 
> The most difficult thing was that JavaScript is a prototype 
> based language, even though most libraries (including 
> prototypes (sic!) and
> script.aculo.us) mostly use it like a class based system. So 
> the first thing to notice is that the Smalltalk object 
> hierarchy does not necessarily reflect the structure of the 
> code on the JavaScript side.
> For example there were some conflicts in SUAjax and 
> SUAutocompleter, where some Smalltalk objects understand 
> messages they shouldn't. I guess this is not really a 
> problem, and if necessary it could be cleanly solved using 
> some well known technique that should not be mentioned in the 
> Seaside mailing-list ;-)
> 
> Apart from that the integration was strait forward. Every 
> JavaScript method has a Smalltalk equivalent + some Smalltalk 
> glue code. I added a lot of unit tests to make sure the 
> transformation works as I expected. Also nice is to have a 
> functional test suite that makes sure that the JavaScript 
> code works as expected and, at the same time, serves as an 
> example for users of the library.
> 
> >     To be honest I'm interested in a couple of widgets of the dojo 
> > javascript toolkit but I don't want to mess arround until I 
> get it, so 
> > if I want to "map" a smalltalkish access to them into Squeak for 
> > instance, which should be my starting point? how the normal 
> cycle of 
> > development should be (I mean debugging things that are not in st 
> > debugger, javascript tutorials that are good to smalltalkers, etc)?
> 
> I would just start with something simple that works and then 
> refine it on the go. I am sure that you can take some ideas 
> from Scriptaculous and maybe even build on top of it reusing 
> its serialization scheme.
> 
> The JavaScript debugger is FireBug (www.getfirebug.com).
> 
> Cheers,
> Lukas
> 
> --
> Lukas Renggli
> http://www.lukas-renggli.ch
> _______________________________________________
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> Seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org
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