Removing Morphic
Andreas Raab
andreas.raab at gmx.de
Sat Oct 21 18:43:56 UTC 2006
> what do you think?
That you should apply the following fix to make your two-second click
pauses go away in the tools:
http://impara.de/pipermail/tweak/2005-August/000881.html
Cheers,
- Andreas
Keith Hodges wrote:
> In my day job I get a lot of time to think, so today I was thinking
> about this thread.
>
> It appears to me that all of the current options represent forks in some
> way. While there are a number of new initiatives (understandably) being
> developed to serve their own goals, in their own islands (if you pardon
> the pun), there does not appear to be an implementation or even an
> envisioned solution that 'serves' the community in such a way as to
> promote cohesion and integration. So I began to think about how one
> might achieve this.
>
> Some extremely talented people have spent a lot of time improving
> morphic. Others are developing frameworks on top of morphic. It would be
> a great shame, perhaps even insulting to even consider 'just throwing it
> out'.
>
> The needs of the community includes a wide range of applications. There
> are those who have their multi-cpu 3D accelerated graphics processors,
> and those for whom raw CPU power is not available. (On my PC 3.9
> typically gives almost a 2 second pause before responding to any mouse
> click in any tool).
>
> Building developer tools in all of these different frameworks is far
> from simple.
>
> Running the developer tools in the same UI framework as the code being
> developed leads to some problems in debugging. (ref. Brick's write up)
> This slows development and probably puts people off developing those
> frameworks further.
>
> Proposal
> --------------
>
> A new gui framework from the ground up, lets call it WIZ, simply because
> I cant think of anything else to call it right now. I think that the
> ground is ready for this, since projects such as Spoon, represent
> potentially new ground anyway, and it may be time to apply some of the
> lessons learnt over the last 20 years. Rather than apply those lessons
> to provide more functionality with less efficiency, aim to promote a
> 'less is more' philosophy.
>
> This framework should be written with the primary goal of being utterly
> simple to develop boring (for boring read business) applications, and
> developer tools.
>
> A second goal would be the requirement to be efficient and fast. i.e. No
> need for graphical rotation. Rectangular clip regions only for fast
> screen redraws. Simple heirarchical components, with an inside-out event
> model, and a simple outside-in layout model.
>
> For those that like skins, or platform specific look and feel like.
> Components should be created via factory patterns (or some equivalent),
> and I figure that there may be scope for applying skins as a mix-in, and
> therefore enabling skin switching by switching the current skin-trait.
>
> Spoon potentially supports multiple displays, and recent vms potentially
> support multiple host windows. Therefore should be possible to run two
> frameworks in parallel.
>
> Morphic can have a WIZWindowMorph which hosts a WIZWindow component.
> Thus all of the WIZ developer tools will be available within morphic.
> The same goes for tweak. Each GUI framework fork can move forward
> without being hindered by a lack of developer tool support.
>
> Using WIZ as the primary UI, then may make it possible to decouple
> Morphic from the developer tools. WIZ could be used for debugging
> Morphic. Morphic need not have developer tools at all. (of course
> Morphic can be used for debugging WIZ). In this way WIZ serves the other
> frameworks and their developers.
>
> The base architecture of WIZ being designed to be embedded in other
> frameworks should therefore naturally be able to support native windows,
> if not native widgets. There is of course nothing stopping anyone using
> native widgets if they want to.
>
> WIZ is likely to exist in a distributed world. Some thought should go in
> the architecture design so as to be appropriate for remote use. I.e. A
> wiz viewer onto a headless seaside image should be a far better solution
> than VNC. The notion of a WIZ thin client could be a relatively sensible
> solution to distributed business apps in contrast to the current state
> of the web. (not forgetting the WIZ Firefox plug in)
>
> WIZ could be an adaptation of the current MVC, I would like to consider
> attempting to use MVP. (would someone going to the London meet like to
> ask Andy Bower if he might consider releasing Dolphin's GUI code under
> MIT licence? Now that would be cool)
>
> This email represents a brainstorm, it in no way reflects my own
> knowledge and ability to actually implement such a framework. However I
> think that this kind of visionary dialog might eventually provide an
> avenue that the whole community can focus upon and feel happy with
> supporting.
>
> what do you think?
>
> best regards
>
> Keith
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
>
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