[Tweak] Tweak position?

goran.krampe at bluefish.se goran.krampe at bluefish.se
Wed Feb 9 07:23:59 UTC 2005


Hi Tweakers and Squeakers and all inbetween! :)

"Andreas Raab" <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Goran -
> 
> > A good article :) on it written many, many eons ago:
> >
> > http://anakin.bluefish.se:8000/sqworld
> 
> Talk about a blast from the past! This is still a pretty good article btw. 

Thanks :)

> And a few of those questions are just hillarious. Say "(if Stable Squeak 

Yes, I know. The article had been wasted by Swiki-pirates, so I revived
it yesterday because of this topic. And I noted that some of those lines
really sound funny today. But I decided to not revise it - hey, it *is*
funny and I can take it. :)

> shold become more "open":) What do you propose as the first steps in opening 
> up Stable Squeak more?" Hey, wasn't I just hearing this from you? Maybe 

Oh yes, you were. :) Now, Tweak *is* opening up IMHO - the Tweak list is
starting to make sounds, you are starting to communicate on it, and this
latest thread on squeak-dev is actually quite nice.

So... isn't that good? ;)

> there's a pattern here ;-)

Yes there is, as in that I *do* think lots of Squeak projects are being
run in a non-open-source fashion. And I would like us to get more open.
I stand by that position. And what do you know - it may very well turn
out that when time goes by, the open projects are the ones still
standing. Just look at Debian.

All the commercial distros come and go (well, a few are long running) -
but Debian is the rock that just gets more and more manpower.

> (though I would hope that Tweak doesn't end up 
> with the same fate) Or this one "Getting this beast out the door." - seems 
> to be the motto of the day :-)

Right.

> And this is a good one, too "What Joseph 
> showed me felt like "the future" for Squeak", well no sir, you got that one 
> wrong :-) (seriously, this is a very funny read in 20/20 hindsight)

I got it wrong as in that StableSqueak never went anywhere. They got
caught in their own cellar insisting on releasing "the perfect Squeak"
and it just never got out. No community building at all. And of course,
it was a fork - and we all know how easy that is in Squeak country.

But I don't think I got it wrong regarding the fact that they tried
cleaning up stuff and tried to modularize etc. That is still a valid
path.

> Well anyway, thanks for sending the link - now if I could just dig up the 
> actual source code to have something to start from...

Well, it isn't *that* hard to find:
	http://swiki.squeakfoundation.org/stablesqueak

I think the relevant files are there. And if not I really don't know.

> > The tricky part with all this might be to find someone with the "itch".
> > I mean, most frameworks have someone holding the torch, like you for
> > Tweak or Ned (kinda) for Morphic. But who would hold the torch for the
> > abstract layer on top?
> 
> Anyone who a) wants his or her framework to be Very Easily Usable (tm) with 
> anyone's tools (assuming the tool maker cares about it) and b) isn't 
> alltogether happy with having to re-hack about five dozen apps in the 
> (known) Morphic universe (browse the extensions of UIManager to get a feel 
> about the ugly places that you have to poke around in).
> 
> In other words, anyone who has had the need to even provide rudimentary 
> replacement support for PopUpMenu and friends - I would suspect that 
> includes at least wxSqueak (and perhaps Seaside, depending how serious Avi 
> takes remote debugging). That's why I said to get these people into the same 
> room and see what they need - if there's a need, there will be action. I 
> know that (personally speaking) I would go with *any* approach which gives 
> me the tools back and I'm almost sure the wxSqueak guys would love it if a 
> new tool could just come up with a native UI.

I agree of course and Michael just posted he is working on this. I just
hope he builds a team (because this is too large a chunk for a single
person) and that he focuses on the programmatical API first, and
declarative building second (XUL, and whatever).

And that he *communicates*. I am serious. Hear me, Michael? :)

> > As most often is the case not much will be done if noone has that itch.
> 
> Heh. Exactly. Read my message as a search for collaborators. Together we may 
> even have a chance to master the process of getting approved into the image.

You know - I really like how this sounds. But I must still ask - what
will Tweak need more?
The Islands stuff (which of course sounds nice too)? This would be
interesting to hear about.

> > Btw, if we are going for an XML description (or hey, why limit us to ONE
> > way of expressing UIs) we could simply try to use the same that say
> > Glade uses. Or the one wx uses. Or at least look at them so that we can
> > interoperate.
> 
> I don't care. I really don't. All I need is TSTTCPW. If that's XML (because 
> we can reuse stuff from SWT) so be it. If that's sort of an AppRegistry with 
> a well-defined interface so be it. If that's Glade, Array specs or anything 
> else that someone else is happy to do ('cause I'm only do one of the former 
> two if I'm going to be the lead) so be it. I just need TSTTCPW.

I agree and as I said, just a programmatic API would even be a great
start.

> That's another major point when you really have an itch to scratch - you 
> stick with the needs. For example, could I have provided more elaborate 
> protocols with UIManager? Sure I could - but I don't *need* it. What is in 
> there is what I really *need*. No more, no less. TSTTCPW. And I would like 
> it to be that way with cross-framework UI support as well. KISS. TSTTCPW. Or 
> whatever else you call it ;-)

I am all with ya. :)

> Cheers,
>   - Andreas

regards, Göran



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