[UI] Re: MenuMorph hand weirdness

Tue Nov 20 17:08:23 UTC 2007

Gary,

MVP indeed predates OA's work, but I have to walk a fine line of making
something compatible and untainted.  I do not think I can serve as a
coder on a clean version.  Tests I can write and distribute.

As for you starting at the bottom and me at the top, that's perfect! 
You clearly have great skill at graphical coding, and have a lot of MVP
work that can stress test my (non-existent, so far) MVP framework; I
also have meta data->code translators that can push it.  A design goal
should be to allow the view hierarchy to change; OA anticipated that,
and it makes sense to continue and extend it.  If the effort succeeds,
we can begin work on a clean room version knowing that success is
possible.

3.9 it is.  I am very pleased to see you also using processes.  The
first tangible system I would be likely to port is a serial
communication multiplexer.  It makes heavy use of streams[*], and
arguably heavy use of processes.  The latter is murky to me, as my
earliest evaluations of Squeak included a reality check on the scheduler
and synchronization; at the time people reported dwarfing my
requirements without problems.  The more recent "fix this or we switch
to Java" discussions were unsettling, though you reported having
improved results with the resulting patches.

[*] I would very much like to put teeth into EndOfStream.  I might even
see how to do it.  As I see it, silent truncation by #next: is an
accident waiting to happen, and exception handling is the answer.  The
problem would be getting it accepted.

Bill

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

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

>>> gazzaguru2 at btinternet.com 11/20/07 10:06 AM >>>

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ui-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> [mailto:ui-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org]On Behalf Of Bill Schwab
> Sent: 20 November 2007 2:44 PM
> To: ui at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> Subject: RE: [UI] Re: MenuMorph hand weirdness
>
>
> Gary,
>
> In terms of describing an interface, I immediately zoom out to the two
> ways one might approach it: graphical editing, and writing code.  The
> nature of the GUI editor and the language are "just details."  IMHO,
> both methods are essential for happy programmers.  I have some GUI
> generating/translating tools that I would expect to port to whatever
> Smalltalk system I end up using; they speak MVP.  If I land in Squeak,
> it will have an MVP framework, if only because I will write one out of
> frustration :)

	a concise (programmatic) construction framework would be nice as
a basis
for graphical tools. Code generation-reintegration is, IMHO, more
flexible
and explict than live prototypes. It is alway good to know that there is
a
basis for recreating a (specific) UI for a system. Similar to the
concept of
the image, good to know that it can (essentially) be regenerated if
corruption problems occur.

>
> As I have mentioned before, I am concerned that any MVP work I do
would
> be tainted with Object Arts' intellectual property.  However, if I
> create a framework (tainted) and my own tests for it (by definition
> clean - right???), then the tests could be the basis for a clean MVP
> framework for Squeak.  Any flaws?  It is a lot of wasted work to write
> and then have someone else rewrite a framework, but it might solve the
> problem.  At least the rewrite would occur with the benefit of tests.
>

	MVP, as I remember, predates Dolphin in research terms...

> With some cleverness, Morphs as views, native widgets, SVG, etc., are
> hopefully just different types of views in the framework.
>

	Indeed, though a mechanism (call it a theme or configuration
perhaps) to
bind a coherent set of things together will help. If things are
cross-pluggable then it should be easy to mix-n-match to suit any need.

> As a practical matter, I have a few too many Squeak images for my own
> good.  I need to archive them all, mine code out of them, and create
one
> image that will move back and forth between Linux and Windows.  Any
> thoughts on 3.9 vs. 3.10?  For 3.9, I would want the
> delay/queue/semaphore fixes; IIRC, those are included in 3.10??
>
> Bill

	Since I'm currently working on deployment to customers I'll be
sticking
with 3.9 (fixes applied) for the moment. Others in the office are on the
3.10 dev beta images. Once our release is stable we'll migrate to 3.10
in
the background, I don't forsee any real problems, not the right time to
abandon 3.9 for our deliverables just yet.

	Found another process related bug i may have to air in the dev
list. Looks
like Process>>isTerminated is not thread safe/and/or correct. Have has
instances where a live process has responded "true" to isTerminated,
briefly! (we are using quite a few processes at various priorities -
preemption bites!)

	For me, for a fresh start, I'd like to start at "the bottom",
basic
drawing/interation (Cairo/BitBlt/Balloon/GTK etc). Perhaps we can meet
halfway...

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