[UI] "the new big thing" [was: MenuMorph hand weirdness]

[Gary Chambers]

Some thoughts on this...

> Having read the LivelyKernel-SourceCode-0.7, I noticed the
> following (list
> not necessarily complete):
>
> - orientated towards a possible WebOS

	have a clear separation between ui definition and presentation

> - resources have URL (basic interoperability of material)

	URIs would be good to adopt, any ui element can be described via a URI

> - imports, exports to/from other of the same kind

	not sure quite what you mean here Klaus

> - graphical base objects out of the SVG box

	have done a bit with SVG (as far as Balloon could manage, Cairo would be a
nice alternative presentation layer, still use Balloon for fallback (with
limitations) for platforms that don't support Cairo (pdas etc).

> - SVG+style is teachable to/learnable by the masses

	and is a standard. would be nice

> - widgets look easy to use/reuse

	indeed... a better composite model would be nice (wishes I coul plug in
different fillStyles at the moment... since they go to the lowest level it
is not currently possible to define a new type of fillStyle that is
composited programatically)

> - small # of support classes besides the UI framework

	with the right framework there'd probably be no "extra" support classes

> - worlds, hands, morphs, ticks are shoulders+neck of that Atlas

	or just one kind of head-of-the-hydra

> - Events / bindings are like a scripter expects them

	when...do... but also asynchronous, like updatingXXMorph - an independent
observer

> - no observable restrictions to animations (limited only by SVG, good)

	down to the in-framework support classes

> - things can be glued together without headaches,
>   within the limitations (good) of SVG

	perhaps no complex interfaces, just individual aspects that can be combined

>
> For sure some of the concepts of LivelyKernel require that mixIns/traits
> are supported but, who cares with a dynamic language and living objects.
>
> And there is that remarkable comment, "my kingdom for a Smalltalk
> block!"

	I like that one!

>
> So my question is, how about borrowing some things from LivelyKernel?

	indeed...