Re: UI framework - design principles
- From: Bill Schwab <bschwab@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 01:13:26 GMT
Günther,
In short I want to build something similar to Morphic, I know Bill has already pointed out that Morphic has some serious shortcomings, but I still think those are implementation details and not necessarily design errors.
There ate some items in each category. Mostly, it's simply incomplete and in need of cleanup. More than anything, it needs a good design lead - iron fist in a velvet glove kind of stuff.
Here is basically why:
As far as I can judge Dolphin, and I'm not talking about MVP, does not really have a framework for creating custom widgets.
It is possible, of course, but one still has to start from the very beginning.
There *is* MoenTree for example, but the code for that won't go a long way, it's just code for that particular widget, and not for anything beyound it. It just shows that it is generally possible to do something like that.
More than that, it is one DLL of a good widget. I wish OA would spend some time doing more of the same vs. struggling to reuse inferior offerings from the Pacific Northwest of the USA.
questions. Like: do you want to make use of Windows widgets
(sometimes/always/never) ?
Never actually
IMHO that's unwise, unless you see your framework as being just another MVP element so that Dolphin can give you the native stuff - it does have a place.
Then there's the question of style. Are you looking for something with a
sophisticated level of abstraction, such as Dolphin MVP, or something simpler
but still abstract (like Morphic),
again I think that's basically implementation detail on top of the framework
Please reconsider. You might be correct, but I respectfully doubt it. Beauty is skin deep; ugly goes to the bone.
I am not working on creating a parallel widget set, my goal is to provide a framework to build custom widgets.
That work where? Dolphin MVP seems a natural choice, and that will set a lot of very elegant and useful design features for you. The Moen tree is a good example to follow. If you can make pluggable/reusable pieces for the details, you might well be on to something.
There seems to be a general conception about what MVP is.
To me MVP is generaly speaking not a UI framework as such, but a style, a pattern in a way.
Fair enough, but it is also a working system, and I suspect you will be much better off if you work within it rather than trying to fight it.
I am not saying that *my* planned framework suggests to deviate from this pattern, not at all actually.
The implementation of MVP in Dolphin uses Windows native Views /controllers, I plan on not doing so.
I pretty much propose to build a framework very similar to Morphic.
In Morphic you can still code in an MVP stile, MVP and Morphic are not in contrast to each other.
Morphic uses worlds - map those 1:1 with a WorldView/WorldPresenter and then you can have morphs all over the place, in Dolphin, and part of MVP. The morphs can even fire commands if you want, via their ultimate owning view or presenter.
One thing to note: in one of the BTF papers, Dan Ingalls wrote about regrets, and planned changes surrounding Morphic's use of coordinates. Everything in Squeak/Morphic is global on the display. Doing otherwise would take work, but it should make a lot more sense when one is trying to figure out why something won't draw correctly.
Also:
I would like for the user to be able to interact more with the GUI as in contrast to conventionally interacting with the application /through/ the GUI.
Morphic gets that right (though you *can* melt it down - trust me<g>). Morphic is a great simulation environment. Maybe someday, some kind soul will use it to build something resembling a user interface :) However, that is really a problem with/for Squeak and should not take away from a Dolphin implementation of Morphic.
Have a good one,
Bill
-- Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D. bills@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx .
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