Hi,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Yes, the main feature of Bloc is that it works and that it can enable us to create interfaces for Pharo that are from this millennium.
We do look well outside of the Smalltalk world, but it can happen that we might have overlooked something. I’d be happy to get pointed to those places. For example, I would be very interested in systems that have editors that can both work with 100Mb and that can now mix text with graphics in any way we want, while typing, and that enable applications like Connector.
Bloc is not an increment over Morphic, and we would have not reached it by incrementing over Morphic. We know because we tried.
About the size issue: Indeed, we are sensitive to this as well. However, this code was actually developed by about 2 people at any point in time. And it was rewritten multiple times. So, the argument that it falls under its own weight is not quite correct given that it did not stop us from producing significant things with it. The size is offset by the fact that the system is debuggable.
It should also be noted that the basic framework provides a lot already. We know this because the editor is 3k lines of code and Mondrian is 1K (two applications with radically different needs).
The dependency on Moz2D is not mandatory. It is offered as an option for those that want to produce industrial solutions.
The current core has parts that do not necessarily have to be there (for example, support for overlays or scrolling). So, the minimal core can be made below 10k without much work.
Cheers, Doru
On Apr 9, 2018, at 11:36 AM, Thierry Goubier thierry.goubier@gmail.com wrote:
2018-04-09 11:23 GMT+02:00 Aliaksei Syrel alex.syrel@gmail.com: Hi,
For the record, View class, a root class of all visual elements in Android 27 is 26'488 lines of code. It didn't hover prevent it from being used on more than 2 billion devices :)
Remind me, please: what is the budget of Google for the ongoing maintenance of Android?
The core of Bloc is just 14k lines of code. It would be nice to know how many lines of code should be considered too much, 5k, 7.43k or 10k.
For a non-rendering core? 2k.
Thierry
Cheers, Alex
On 9 April 2018 at 11:12, Thierry Goubier thierry.goubier@gmail.com wrote:
2018-04-09 11:02 GMT+02:00 Serge Stinckwich serge.stinckwich@gmail.com:
On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 9:54 AM, Thierry Goubier thierry.goubier@gmail.com wrote: 2018-04-09 9:14 GMT+02:00 Tudor Girba tudor@tudorgirba.com:
Hi,
I think it might be more interesting to start the review from the usage of it, not from the internals.
Well, from the usage of it, I've seen nothing that doesn't fit into the yagt. I've seen that field evolve and try clever things, really different things, and Bloc does not look like one of thoses.
Indeed, Bloc is primarily an engineering effort. But, there are a couple of things that make it rather different from other solutions. For example:
- Only one rendering tree in all cases. This works also for graph visualizations that work with any element without imposing knowledge about edges in the base system. We think this is quite important, and especially when combined with a performant rendering, it can open new doors for UI design.
Look, from the point of view of the man of the art, it doesn't seems like a breakthrough.
Do we need a breakthrought for UI ? No ! We need something that works that's it, stable software with good documentation and tests. After that people can build the next-UI if they want, but this is build on solid foundations.
Agreed. And this is where it is critical.
I used Morphic since Self 3.0, beginning of my PhD (1994, I think), followed it to the beginning of Squeak (1998). When I came back to Pharo in 2011, I was horrified by what it has became: a monster of thousands over thousands of buggy lines.
And now I see a replacement, that, before going into production, is already at 45k lines? And with a planned, huge dependency on the GUI lib of another project?
Do you imagine how it will be, 10 years down the line?
Do you think it will be the stable foundation you're looking for?
Compared to other smalltalk-based solutions, yes, it may be seen as an improvement.
I think you underestimate how advanced that field has been / is, and how far behind the state of the art are industrial solutions.
There is only one development in the Smalltalk space in GUI that is worthy of interest for me: the anti-aliasing of Juan Vuletich. It would have so much impact overall (remove all dependencies on external libs, remove the need to do font anti-aliasing, scrap thousands of lines of slow and ugly Smalltalk code, simplify the FreeType infrastructure, remove MBs of external librairies, ensure long-term porting ease / code evolution).
M aybe this was a breakthrought, but how many users ?
Very few users. Juan has not yet implemented it.
Regards,
Thierry
Regards,
Serge Stinckwich UMI UMMISCO 209 (SU/IRD/UY1) "Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute." http://www.doesnotunderstand.org/
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