8 Apr
2018
8 Apr
'18
8:21 p.m.
Hi,
On Apr 8, 2018, at 10:27 AM, Hernán Morales Durand
<hernan.morales(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Tudor,
Very nice! Thank you for sharing, this seems to be hard work.
Thanks.
If you welcome some feedback:
Live tab:
- When I select "Figure" button, then choose from the figures toolbar and put a
figure, the selection focus goes back to the "Select" button loosing the figures
toolbar. It would be nice to save some clicks by staying in the Figure when putting a lot
of figures.
Indeed, we are thinking about keeping the Figure mode when pressing Shift.
- The "Figure" are actually UML figures? It
would be cool to categorize the types of figures available in a toolbar.
The Figures is actually any figures. The figures available are there for validation to
show that both simple figures and complicated one (such as a UML class) can work fine.
But, you can define your own stencils (factories of figures) and they will appear there.
- Clicking "Line" button does not display
any lines to select (maybe ToDo?)
ToDo indeed :).
Events tab
- I guess is used for Undo/Redo
"User data", "Resizers", and "Transformation"
- I didn't understood what are they for.
These are element specific views in the inspector, each interesting for different
purposes. For example, the Events presentation shows a log of all events that reached the
element - a very useful input when debugging UI logic.
I am intrigued by the "inject visual
attributes" per-instance, maybe something like the old Parts Workbench from
VisualSmalltalk?
I do not know what the Parts Workbench is. In our case, we want to be able to specify the
look of an element independent from the element itself, and we want to be able to do that
per element instance, not per type, and not as a global behavior (like in the current
theme).
Cheers,
Doru
Cheers,
Hernán
2018-04-07 13:39 GMT-03:00 Tudor Girba <tudor(a)tudorgirba.com>om>:
Hi,
We are happy to announce an initial version of GT Diagrammer, an engine for constructing
diagrams interactively. This is the newest addition to the next generation GT built on
Bloc.
It looks like this:
https://twitter.com/feenkcom/status/976341449267531776
<diagrammer-overview.png>
We chose to work on Diagrammer for multiple reasons. First, developers often need to
create hand built diagrams to communicate intentions, and an integrated experience should
not require us to leave our environment to create them. At the same time, Diagrammer is an
application that requires a widgets and interactions, and thus it is a nice exercise for
Bloc and Brick.
One requirement we had from the beginning was to make it work with any Bloc element. This
means that the editing part had to be reasonably generic. To this end, we now have
elements that can define visual editors. This is somewhat a combination between Magritte
descriptions, and inspector extensions. An interesting side effect is that now we can edit
visual properties when inspecting any element. In other words, we got the basic
infrastructure of a UI painter. It looks like this:
https://twitter.com/feenkcom/status/982656456968241152
The user interface essentially relies on two widgets: scrollable list and toggle button.
While the visual look of the toggle button is inspired from material design, the most
interesting part is that now we have an implementation for controlling looks per element
instance. A key issue here is that looks can react to events coming from the element and
inject visual attributes and possible even change behavior (for example, changing an icon
while pressing a button). We will post more about looks soon.
We now also have a nice solution for overlays. For example, we have an overlay showing
selection and an overlay for resizing elements.
Perhaps less obvious, Diagrammer also offers a basic infrastructure for the area of
visual languages. As Diagrammer works with any Bloc elements, we can simply create
dedicated visual elements. As an example, Diagrammer comes with an implementation of a UML
class figure. Furthermore, as the functionality does not impose a specific model, custom
language semantics can be mapped on visual actions.
There are several things to do still for it to become a mature solution. An important
next step is to serialize a diagram scene in a reproducible manner. Currently, the diagram
(or any element) can be exported as pdf
(https://twitter.com/feenkcom/status/976580153802358786), svg
(https://twitter.com/feenkcom/status/976578060429484032), png, gif or jpeg by directly
using the low level canvas. However, for the diagram to be truly useful we need to store
the result in either code or another reloadable form such as STON. Other future directions
are related to figure controlling (for example, custom anchors or line bending points) and
to enhanced editors.
To play with it, the easiest way is to download the new GT in a Pharo 6.1 image:
Metacello new
baseline: 'GToolkit';
repository: 'github://feenkcom/gtoolkit/src';
load.
And then inspect:
GtDiagrammerElement new
Cheers,
The feenk team
--
www.tudorgirba.com
www.feenk.com
"Presenting is storytelling."
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--
www.tudorgirba.com
www.feenk.com
"Sometimes the best solution is not the best solution."