9 Feb
2015
9 Feb
'15
10:14 p.m.
Hi all,
This mail will have two parts, a small first one where I share my
advances and little context on the project and the second one, with
details where I made specific questions regarding concepts and code and
how to make progress. I hope to be fluid and proper balanced and
interesting enough to get feedback soon.
Context
=======
I have made a small video at [1] showing my progress on Grafoscopio[2],
a tool for the creation of interactive notebooks for open/citizen/garage
science and research (for a better view I recommend to see the video in
full screen mode).
As you can see, I have a complete outline of the Agile Visualization
book stored as a single "ston document" [3], that can be exported to
pandoc's markdown [4] and from there to LaTeX, pdf, html, doc, etc.
It can contain special tagged nodes and the view and behaviour of them
change accordingly to the tag. In the video a node tagged as code is
showed as an interactive playground where you can execute an explore the
objects deeper.
My problem is that this kind of special nodes are not saved, as happens
with default nodes and the reason is that the special view (which is a
sub-browser) is not wired properly to the rest of the browser and that's
why I get a nill value after revisiting the code node in the video.
[1] https://archive.org/details/gfcp-alpha-code-exec-but-non-saving.mp4
[2]
http://mutabit.com/offray/static/blog/output/posts/grafoscopio-idea-and-ini…
[3]
http://mutabit.com/deltas/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/doc/tip/Docs/En/Books/Ag…
[4]
http://mutabit.com/deltas/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/doc/tip/Docs/En/Books/Ag…
Details
=======
The logic of what I'm doing is something like this:
i. When a node in tree at the left is selected, it shows the contents of
the selected tree.
ii. If something changes in the node content at the right, the changes
are automatically updated.
iii. If a node is tagged in a special way, a custom browser is called.
The code that select which sub-browser to show for a particular tagged
node is something like this:
==[a]==============================
UI>>buildBrowserNamed: aName
"Main method for building the interface for trees and its nodes. The
name of the browser corresponds to the name of the file
where tree is stored (or is named 'draft.ston' by default)"
"... snip"
(browser transmit)
from: #tree port: #selection;
to: #nodeBody;
when: [:selection | selection notNil];
andShow: [ :a :node |
self bodyIn: a for: node.
self body2ForCodeIn: a for: node.
self bodyForTransmediaIn: a for: node ].
"... snip"
"Creating a self updatable body pane"
(browser transmit)
from: #tree port: #selection;
to: #nodeBody;
when: [:selection | selection notNil];
andShow: [ :a :node |
self bodyIn: a for: node.
self body2ForCodeIn: a for: node.
self bodyForTransmediaIn: a for: node ].
(browser transmit )
from: #tree port: #selection;
from: #nodeBody port: #text;
when: [:node :text | text notNil & node notNil];
to: #nodeBody port: #neverland;
transformed: [:node :text | node body: text asString].
(browser transmit)
from: #tree;
to: #nodeHeader;
andShow: [ :h | self headerOn: h ].
(browser transmit )
from: #tree port: #selection;
from: #nodeHeader port: #text;
to: #nodeHeader port: #neverland1;
when: [:node :text | text notNil & node notNil];
transformed: [:node :text | node header: text asString]
===================================
The last part of the code is responsible for updating the tree contents
automatically with
The "body2ForCodeIn: for:" [b] is the responsible for showing the
playground by calling a custom browser that is called
"panelAsCodeFor:"[c]. Here is their code:
==[b]==============================
UI>> body2ForCodeIn: constructor for: aNode
"Shows the body of a selected node as executable code."
aNode tags = 'código'
ifFalse: [ ^self ]
ifTrue: [constructor custom: (self panelAsCodeFor: aNode)].
===================================
==[c]==============================
panelAsCodeFor: aNode
"Shows an interactive playground for Smalltalk code in a node body"
browser := GLMTabulator new.
browser title: 'Código'.
browser column: #code.
browser transmit
to: #code;
transformed: [ GTPlayPage new content: aNode body ];
andShow: [ :a | a custom: GTPlayground new ].
browser sendToOutside: #nodeBody from: #code -> #text.
^ browser.
===================================
So, wiring by "sendToOutside: from:" is not working and I don't know how
to tell my code browser to autosave its contents as part of the node
body where they belong.
Any help with this is appreciated.
Cheers,
Offray