On 5-Jul-07, at 1:59 PM, Blake wrote:

> On Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:52:26 -0700, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org>  
> wrote:
>
>> I'm rather inclined to the idea that "Morphic Must Die!"
>
> Where does that leave eToys (EToys? e-Toys?)?
Exactly where it is now. It would keep working in the images in use  
and get improved, updated, fixed exactly as now. Just within a forked  
image; which I think it  pretty much is in practice.

>
>> Making a minimal system - either yor way or Craig's way - present  
>> an opportunity to start from a place with NO constraints arising  
>> from a previous framework that has to be kept limping along
>>
>> I would *love* to see a new, clean, designed UI/graphics system  
>> implemented that can take advantage of host windows, Cairo,  
>> freetype, etc. No, I'm *not* offering to design it.
>
> Wouldn't using Cairo automatically include host windows?
>
> Or do you mean a system should allow direct native windows as well  
> as through various libraries?

Don't know the answer to that one; I was under the impression that  
Cairo was 'just' graphics but I haven't really researched it per se.  
Given that we do have Ffenestri already, and FFI, I imagine one  
possible approach to a really simplistic UI might be to use Ffenestri  
to handle windows and make some FFI calls to draw widgets? Cairo  
seems to have a tolerable cross-platform presence though, so it must  
be worth considering.

The real point though is simply that we can do something *different*  
when we have tools that allow us to start from almost-scratch whilst  
still having an existing system to build the new code in. Spoon can  
provide a way to develop a chunk of code in an image with all the  
tools we're currently used to, save it out as a spoonful and have the  
'new ' image be spoon-fed the package. It's like cross-development  
without so much cross :-)


tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Bad command or file name.  Go stand in the corner.