enhancements to wonderland and B3D sensible?

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Sat Mar 27 12:15:03 UTC 2004


Bill,

> I *really* do not understand why you are surprised
> that people would think about Croquet's being packaged
> in a way that would allow us to use pieces of it in Squeak.

That sums it up nicely I think ;-) What you're talking about is Croquet's
current packaging rather than Croquet as a system. IOW, when you talk about
"extracting the 3D engine" you mean extracting the source code from
CroquetX.Y.image, is that correct?

In this case all I can say is that we've done this already (the last time we
did it was when we upgraded Croquet to be 3.6-based) and there is no reason
that you couldn't load a source bundle into another Squeak (version
differences and lots of other little problems non-withstanding).

Cheers,
  - Andreas

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Schwab" <BSchwab at anest.ufl.edu>
To: <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2004 5:47 AM
Subject: Re: enhancements to wonderland and B3D sensible?


Andreas,

=========================
You're missing my point completely.
=========================

That's quite possible.  Also, Croquet is probably quite different now than
it was/is in the snapshot that I have of it.



=========================
What I am saying is that Croquet is an
intrinsically 3D environment so "extracting the 3D engine" is something that
simply doesn't apply to it.

It's like saying "let's extract the pixel
processor from BitBlt" ;-) the pixel processor *is* BitBlt, and similarly
the 3D engine *is* Croquet.
=========================

To us outsiders (at least to this outsider), Croquet sounds like (not meant
to be exhaustive)

* fault-tolerant collaboration
* retained mode 3D (Nice stuff, BTW)
* 3D user interface

It is the latter that "bothers" me the most, at least in terms of trying to
use Croquet for everyday tasks.  My concerns are partly based in load time,
and largely about the user's willingness or ability to interact with the
user interface.

I think it is reasonable to ask whether one can get the benefit of the
retained mode engine w/o forcing the 3D user interface on the user.  If you
tell me that the 3D objects need the collaboration, so be it.  It's another
package that I would simply load.



=========================
What "full price" are we talking about? Having a consumer-level graphics
card that's available with each and every computer being shipped today?
Or -oh my god- putting said graphics card actually to work?! ;-)
=========================

No, the 30 or so seconds it takes to load.  Before you say anything, I
realize that it's a pre-pre-pre alpha version, but it still takes 30 seconds
to settle down.  The Smalltalk image loads almost immediately, but the 3D
user interface with all of the content (the stuff that I think of as
Croquet) takes 30 seconds to load.  That's what I mean by "full price".
BTW, I did indeed have problems getting the early version to work.  Only one
machine as delivered would run it w/o tweaking.  These were new P4's at the
time.

Back to size and load time, perhaps the answer is to create a Croquet
environment with minimal content.  Otherwise, you will probably get requests
for factoring Croquet into packages, including retained mode graphics, that
can be loaded into Squeak.  In fact, Ferdinand effectively made such a
request.  I jumped in because the same thing had occured to me last year.




=========================
> Besides, if one cannot mine Croquet for the benefit
> of Squeak, then is not one or the other project a fork?

Well, is Monticello a fork because it assumes that it has PackageInfo? Is
Wonderland a fork because you can't "extract" WonderlandActor and expect it
to work without the surrounding environment?
=========================

But those are all packages that load into Squeak.  Ferdinand and I are
talking about a better Wonderland package based on your work in/for
Croquet - a package, not an isolated class (which I agree would be silly).




=========================
Sure, you can "mine" Croquet for whatever you'd like - just don't expect a
few randomly taken classes to work smoothly together.
=========================

That's not what I'm saying.  It seems reasonable that there would be value
in having the "flat Squeak" benefit from the improvements you have made in
3D graphics.  You appear to have created something that puts a retained mode
interface on top of Baloon 3D, but made it much more programmer-friendly
than Alice.




=========================
> BTW, I wouldn't care if it were not for the slickness
> of Croquet's approach to 3D graphics. It would seem a
> shame to make that an all or nothing proposition.

Seriously, you lost me completely. I *really* don't know what "all or
nothing" proposition you are talking about. You know, when you load a
package from SM you are in the same "all or nothing" situation. You get the
entire package ... or not. I *really* don't understand what you're talking
about.
=========================

Ok, suppose I want to make a fundamentally 2D user interface, but have 3D
objects floating around in a couple of windows.  I want to leverage your
slick approach to 3D programming, but cannot throw my user in with the
objects.

I *really* do not understand why you are surprised that people would think
about Croquet's being packaged in a way that would allow us to use pieces of
it in Squeak.

Regards,

Bill


Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bills at anest4.anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029





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