On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 1:46 PM, Michael Davies mykdavies+squeak@gmail.com 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