On Nov 3, 2010, at 10:17 AM, Tudor Girba wrote:
Hi Stef,
Thanks for pushing this.
I definitely understand these issues, and a solution will follow in the near future. It is just a matter of effort, and until now the main goal was to get things going at the model level. This is now working quite well, so now it's time to focus on the rendering and on the API.
good to hear that.
The only thing is that the API will only grow from people using it. With Mondrian, we could do it by having it used by a small amount of people. Glamour is a more complicated engine, and getting the right API right is not as straightforward. What you have right now is already the third version.
I imagine
The rest of the comments are inlined.
I asked several guys around here to have a look at Glamour and gives you feedback and to see if we can build some cool tools with glamour. Alain told me that he will have a look too.
Now the problem of benjamin is also really interesting in the sense that we could not debug it and find the problem ourselves and that was frustrating: mismatch of block arguments or something like that.
This was a mismatch of the returned type.
Still the point is how can we make sure that we can debug it because the model is aligned with our mental model.
This is this aspect of glamour that I would like to see lowered. You see even reading your answer and looking at the code I do not get it. :(
then some questions:
why children: [:item :x :level |
level > 1 ifTrue: [#()] ifFalse: [1 to: item ] ]].could not be
child: childObject level: level....
Basically, for every item, we want to know how to build the children collection. When you need to reason about multiple things, you need to pass them as a parameter in the block.
Perhaps we can have something like:
children: aBlock children: aBlock atLevel: anInteger children: aBlock atLevelHigherThan: anInteger
Yes
I have no idea what is x.
in this case, the second variable is not used inside the block, so I just marked it with x to document that fact. The object is the presentation object.
This is an hidden assumption and without an example I would have no idea that I should pass 3 arg block. Blocks used at their limits are evil since they do not have names.
So for me there is an overuse of block and blocks have no name contrary to method so we miss a lot of the hidden context. So any solution lowering the amount of blocks would be good may be using methods instead and (in that case having less scripting and more programming api would help).
The blocks are just a convenience to construct and parameterize your presentations. Of course, this is only one way, and not the only way :). There really isn't anything magic about it. But, as I said, I will follow with another mail in the following days.
Good. I'm eager to see that. Now consider that your focus should not be on scripting (you have that API) but on how to build classes and use the power of classes to achieve build the same browsers.
Hi Stef,
I asked several guys around here to have a look at Glamour and gives you feedback and to see if we can build some cool tools with glamour. Alain told me that he will have a look too.
Now the problem of benjamin is also really interesting in the sense that we could not debug it and find the problem ourselves and that was frustrating: mismatch of block arguments or something like that.
This was a mismatch of the returned type.
Still the point is how can we make sure that we can debug it because the model is aligned with our mental model.
Yes, this is important, but I do not have a good answer here. The same thing happens in Mondrian, and also in Seaside. We would need some interesting Exceptions that would allow us to translate the internal problems into something that the user can understand. This would be a good candidate for a research project :)
I have no idea what is x.
in this case, the second variable is not used inside the block, so I just marked it with x to document that fact. The object is the presentation object.
This is an hidden assumption and without an example I would have no idea that I should pass 3 arg block. Blocks used at their limits are evil since they do not have names.
It is hidden indeed, and that is why the current API tries to limit the amount of block arguments for 99% of usages to about 2. The case of children: is not quite representative, and I agree that it is rather obscure.
So for me there is an overuse of block and blocks have no name contrary to method so we miss a lot of the hidden context. So any solution lowering the amount of blocks would be good may be using methods instead and (in that case having less scripting and more programming api would help).
The blocks are just a convenience to construct and parameterize your presentations. Of course, this is only one way, and not the only way :). There really isn't anything magic about it. But, as I said, I will follow with another mail in the following days.
Good. I'm eager to see that. Now consider that your focus should not be on scripting (you have that API) but on how to build classes and use the power of classes to achieve build the same browsers.
I know :).
Cheers, Doru
-- www.tudorgirba.com
"Some battles are better lost than fought."
hello, there still are things I do not understand in your examples, and I hope you could help me because I really want to understand how Glamour works ^^
When you write :
t1 transmit to: #three; from: #one -> #selectionPath;
what happen ?
Because I have looked for implementors of selectionPath, put a self halt in each of them, run your browser, but no halt has been thrown, so I'm confused (again).
Moreover, I now know how to show a list, and how to pass the selected items from the list to another column/row, but I wonder how to use the selected item as a parameter for a method and how to get the answer of this method back to be used in another part.
I keep hope to understand how it works ^^
Benjamin
Hi Benjamin,
Great, it looks like you are getting into the details :).
Before going forward, please read the short design description: http://www.themoosebook.org/book/internals/glamour/architecture
To get an idea of how a browser looks like inside, we also use a special notation: http://www.themoosebook.org/book/internals/glamour/sketching
Transmissions connect ports of panes.
When you have #one->#selectionPath, you are basically specifying that we refer to the #selectionPath port from the #one port. This is a shortcut that will be deprecated in the future. You will have to explicitly say #to:port:.
When you have "transmit to: #one", you transmit to the default input port of a pane which is named #entity.
When you have "transmit from: #one", you transmit to the default output port of a pane which is named #selection.
The ports can be named in any way you want. You can think of them as instance variables of a pane. It is then up to you to connect the ports correctly. Some of the presentations know how to populate some ports by default. For example: - a list will populate the #selection port with the item selected in the ui - a tree will populate the #selectionPath with a collection holding the items from the selected item to the root of the tree
I hope this helps. Please continue to ask questions :)
Cheers, Doru
On 3 Nov 2010, at 12:59, Benjamin wrote:
hello, there still are things I do not understand in your examples, and I hope you could help me because I really want to understand how Glamour works ^^
When you write :
t1 transmit to: #three; from: #one -> #selectionPath;
what happen ?
Because I have looked for implementors of selectionPath, put a self halt in each of them, run your browser, but no halt has been thrown, so I'm confused (again).
Moreover, I now know how to show a list, and how to pass the selected items from the list to another column/row, but I wonder how to use the selected item as a parameter for a method and how to get the answer of this method back to be used in another part.
I keep hope to understand how it works ^^
Benjamin _______________________________________________ Moose-dev mailing list Moose-dev@iam.unibe.ch https://www.iam.unibe.ch/mailman/listinfo/moose-dev
-- www.tudorgirba.com
"We cannot reach the flow of things unless we let go."
I just succeed to make my first Glamour-designed browser works ^^
Thank you Doru for your advice, I'll read both article and keep asking questions ^^ So prepare yourself ;)
Benjamin
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Benjamin -
Stéphane Ducasse -
Tudor Girba