Glenn sent me this teaser but I was waiting

Hi Stef,

from past discussions/threads I know "Bloc" as Pharo's possible future UI, watched the video [1]

yes it was cool :)

and have played with the premade 
image from the CI Server. Also the Brick layer (which is on top of Bloc) was announced as a preview once [2].


Now in some of the mails it was mentioned that there will be or already is a "Bloc 2" (see [3]). Can you or the person
working on it summarize:

 - who works on it

�� Glenn Cavarle with Alain Plantec (and me from far and too little time) and Doru but I do not know much from that part.
�� There was a separate slack team and since I did not like this idea I did not ask to join it.
�� May be now this is folded back in the Pharo slack channel which to me would be better.

 - what are the goals, what will be included (like the CSS styling)

�� Glenn implemented a new version of Bloc because he needed one for his job
�� The flux in Bloc from October did not match with his requirements so without telling it to Alain and me he built one
�� until he could show us something working and it works.
�� I should say that I was also frustrated by the results of the discussions since October. Especially since before presenting
�� Bloc to ESUG we got 4 versions and I tried to follow alain and help him documenting Bloc and while my stupid questions helped him
�� it was difficult for me. So I really appreciate the effort of Glenn.

�� In June we spent three days to understand if we should merge Bloc2 into Bloc and we decided the inverse because
�� his implementation is based on SDL and a separate window) it does not suffer from the morphic plague. So for example
�� the event bubbling is nice and clean. The idea is to be able to use one window (morphic) to develop
�� all the widgets and displayed in the SDL window needed up to the point where we can remove morphic.

�� So Bloc2 can benefit from the work of Aliak on Sparta and the mozzD backend.
�� The idea is also to integrate the work on aliak on layouts.

�� Bloc2
�� SDL2
�� nice bubbling
�� Bloc layout
�� Sparta or MozzD back-end
�� Nice core without the problem mention back in feb
�� CSS styling
��
here is what Gellen two me the 25 of July

�� Concernant Bloc, ��a devient assez stable mais il reste encore des sujets �� valider/am��liorer/stabiliser:
�� - styles&themes -> 1��re ��bauche r��alis��e
�� - Path (Shapes custom) -> voir ce que l'on peut reprendre de Athens-SVG
�� - KeyBinding -> 1��re version�� tr��s simple r��alis��e mais sans la gestion des s��quences (ctrl A+B)
�� - Animation -> premi��re version plut��t concluante
�� - Parent�� des fen��tres ou sous-fen��tres
�� - Am��lioration des performances de dessin par cr��ation de surfaces au niveau de BlElement -> premier r��sultats concluant mais non-int��gr��.
�� - Gestion des Gestures (MultiTouch) -> migration des gestures d'OSWindow au niveau de Bloc sous forme d'EventListener (pas de gestures globales)
�� - Gestion du Focus keyboard -> la base y est mais il reste encore pas mal de boulot
�� - Mise en relation DnD et Clipboard -> l'instructure est l�� mais il reste �� faire le "cablage"
�� - ...
��
�� J'essaie de mettre ma roadmap au propre pour d��but de semaine prochaine.
�� Les prochains widgets sur ma liste sont: scrollbar & liste,

 - where it is hosted

�� For the moment you can find it in GlennCavarle repo on smalltalkhub.
�� Glenn is working for a company for ihs PhD and a week on two he is working on Bloc2.
�� Bloc2 is key for Glenn and Alain since Thales wants to use it.
��
�� MCHttpRepository
�� location: 'http://smalltalkhub.com/mc/GlennCavarle/Bloc2/main'
�� user: ''
�� password: ''

�� Now with the name removal we got some trouble to load it in Pharo 60.
�� You can load it in Pharo 50. Say yes to all the warnings.

�� Doru told me that he is talking with Glenn and that Bloc2 will be moved to the Bloc repo (by the end of this week).
��
�� Esteban is following the discussions and will help for the SDL part and FFI. The SDL is fragile and the system freezes from time to time.
�� But 64 bits first :)
��

 - what the status is

�� The core design looks stable to me.
�� We can import SVG, create first buttons and style them (the skins in Bloc2 are so far not a theme) and the CSS is not
�� for Skins but for style.
�� Widgets can start to be built on top. The problem is that Brick took a glitch in Bloc1 and uses it against the expectation
�� of Alain. So I do not think that we can port easily Brick to Bloc2.
�� I started to read everything. And I will start to improve the class comments.

 - if there is already a CI build or preview

�� You can load it from Glenn's repo
�� There are examples. During holiday I tried to set up a jenkins but the network was too bad.
�� This is on my todo but I'm busy since I'm back to work.
��

 - how Brick will relate to "Bloc 2", will there be a "Brick 2" as well?

�� I think that Brick should be rewritten on top of Bloc2 because the design of Brick
�� was the thing that made Bloc get changed in October and after it changed too much.

 - if it will work with Spec

�� Spec is orthogonal.
�� As soon as we will have widgets we will do a Spec binding for them.
�� In the long term we will see if another framework wants to replace Spec to compose widgets (I know that alain has some ideas)
�� but for now we want to be able to move our tool fast to new Brick and it should be possible and it should also
�� simplify Spec because some of the design points of Spec are ugly because the old widget relay on change/update and
�� what is needed is a notification (announcement).

Even if not all could be answered (yet) more informations on "Bloc 2" would really be nice, ideally as a 
status summary to the community.

Thanks
T.

[1] https://vimeo.com/115336678
[2] http://gtoolkit.org/brick/
[3] http://lists.pharo.org/pipermail/pharo-dev_lists.pharo.org/2016-August/123115.html