[Pharo-project] Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean?
Hello Pharo Devs, I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo. I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly? For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (Exposé, etc.). Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert. Best regards, Sebastian
On 24 November 2012 16:06, Sebastian Nozzi <sebnozzi@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Pharo Devs,
I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo.
I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly?
It means exactly what it says: Use opengl library as a backend.
For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (Exposé, etc.).
Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert.
Yes. But do not misinterpret things: making opengl backend will not make everything "eye-candy" immediately. For having this, people should implement these fancy effects first :) -- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.
"eye candy" wise this is exactly the focus of my Ephestos project , Morpheas section. A custom gui , gui designers for easy creating of GUIs by the user and additional moprh widget with customized look including eye candy. I can't make any promises, as I have no clue what kind of obstacles and technical limitations I am going to find in the process but I can tell you I am willing to invest years and if all goes well even decades of efforts since its an area that I love to code for. As a first part I am in the process of creating a tutorial generator which will be ProfStef on steroids for at first offering tutorial for Athens and later used for any kind of Pharo tutorial. I am also interested in helping Athens porting to OpenGL and generally using NBOpenGL as the next step for Morphic. Excitting stuff the only thing it worries me is the type of technical blocks / obstacles I may come across but trying is certainly well worths it. ________________________________ From: Sebastian Nozzi <sebnozzi@gmail.com> To: Pharo Development <Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> Sent: Saturday, 24 November 2012, 17:06 Subject: [Pharo-project] Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean? Hello Pharo Devs, I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo. I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly? For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (Exposé, etc.). Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert. Best regards, Sebastian
.. and you can count on me in your quest for excellence :) On 25 November 2012 15:02, dimitris chloupis <thekilon@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
"eye candy" wise this is exactly the focus of my Ephestos project , Morpheas section. A custom gui , gui designers for easy creating of GUIs by the user and additional moprh widget with customized look including eye candy.
I can't make any promises, as I have no clue what kind of obstacles and technical limitations I am going to find in the process but I can tell you I am willing to invest years and if all goes well even decades of efforts since its an area that I love to code for.
As a first part I am in the process of creating a tutorial generator which will be ProfStef on steroids for at first offering tutorial for Athens and later used for any kind of Pharo tutorial.
I am also interested in helping Athens porting to OpenGL and generally using NBOpenGL as the next step for Morphic. Excitting stuff the only thing it worries me is the type of technical blocks / obstacles I may come across but trying is certainly well worths it.
________________________________ From: Sebastian Nozzi <sebnozzi@gmail.com> To: Pharo Development <Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> Sent: Saturday, 24 November 2012, 17:06 Subject: [Pharo-project] Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean?
Hello Pharo Devs,
I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo.
I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly?
For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (Exposé, etc.).
Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert.
Best regards,
Sebastian
-- Best regards, Igor Stasenko.
Wow!!! You have no idea how incredible I found to be reading something like this: "I am willing to invest years and if all goes well even decades of efforts since its an area that I love to code for". It definitely made my day! :-) Especially the last part, that you really *love* to code in this area (something I cannot but admire). I always found the Squeak/Pharo environment so cool to code in, the "aliveness" of the image, but also had the feeling that the graphics system was a little outdated. Unfortunately being unable to do something about it, first because I have no expertise in the area, and second, because... well... I guess I'm lazy and not patient/talented enough for graphics programming ;-). It is therefor great that Igor and now you showed up, able to improve in this area, and also willing :-) To sum it up: I always thought that open-source Smalltalk should *look* as great from the "outside" as it is cool on the "inside" (the semantics). It simply deserves no less. So I am really grateful for any effort put in this. Pharo already looks great, much has been archived, and I can't wait to see what you guys will come up with next... Best regards, Sebastian 2012/11/25 dimitris chloupis <thekilon@yahoo.co.uk>:
"eye candy" wise this is exactly the focus of my Ephestos project , Morpheas section. A custom gui , gui designers for easy creating of GUIs by the user and additional moprh widget with customized look including eye candy.
I can't make any promises, as I have no clue what kind of obstacles and technical limitations I am going to find in the process but I can tell you I am willing to invest years and if all goes well even decades of efforts since its an area that I love to code for.
As a first part I am in the process of creating a tutorial generator which will be ProfStef on steroids for at first offering tutorial for Athens and later used for any kind of Pharo tutorial.
I am also interested in helping Athens porting to OpenGL and generally using NBOpenGL as the next step for Morphic. Excitting stuff the only thing it worries me is the type of technical blocks / obstacles I may come across but trying is certainly well worths it.
________________________________ From: Sebastian Nozzi <sebnozzi@gmail.com> To: Pharo Development <Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> Sent: Saturday, 24 November 2012, 17:06 Subject: [Pharo-project] Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean?
Hello Pharo Devs,
I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo.
I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly?
For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (Exposé, etc.).
Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert.
Best regards,
Sebastian
On Nov 25, 2012, at 7:43 PM, Sebastian Nozzi wrote:
Wow!!! You have no idea how incredible I found to be reading something like this: "I am willing to invest years and if all goes well even decades of efforts since its an area that I love to code for". It definitely made my day! :-) Especially the last part, that you really *love* to code in this area (something I cannot but admire).
I always found the Squeak/Pharo environment so cool to code in, the "aliveness" of the image, but also had the feeling that the graphics system was a little outdated. Unfortunately being unable to do something about it, first because I have no expertise in the area, and second, because... well... I guess I'm lazy and not patient/talented enough for graphics programming ;-). It is therefor great that Igor and now you showed up, able to improve in this area, and also willing :-)
To sum it up: I always thought that open-source Smalltalk should *look* as great from the "outside" as it is cool on the "inside" (the semantics).
Oh yes. May be you did not see it but adding polymorph was the first things we did even if the code was not perfect. I often said to my students if you want to faint or vomit when you open Squeak (at that time I was maintaining squeak3.8or9) then this is normal we are working on it and one day it will be cool. So these is years that I want to get a vector graphics based ui and a lot more :)
It simply deserves no less.
So I am really grateful for any effort put in this. Pharo already looks great, much has been archived, and I can't wait to see what you guys will come up with nextâ¦
just help :) There are a lot of little tasks that can help us. Like checking if a bug is still a bug in the current version. I'm still learning a lot by trying (and I fail often) to fix something but I nearly always learn something.
Best regards,
Sebastian
2012/11/25 dimitris chloupis <thekilon@yahoo.co.uk>:
"eye candy" wise this is exactly the focus of my Ephestos project , Morpheas section. A custom gui , gui designers for easy creating of GUIs by the user and additional moprh widget with customized look including eye candy.
I can't make any promises, as I have no clue what kind of obstacles and technical limitations I am going to find in the process but I can tell you I am willing to invest years and if all goes well even decades of efforts since its an area that I love to code for.
As a first part I am in the process of creating a tutorial generator which will be ProfStef on steroids for at first offering tutorial for Athens and later used for any kind of Pharo tutorial.
I am also interested in helping Athens porting to OpenGL and generally using NBOpenGL as the next step for Morphic. Excitting stuff the only thing it worries me is the type of technical blocks / obstacles I may come across but trying is certainly well worths it.
________________________________ From: Sebastian Nozzi <sebnozzi@gmail.com> To: Pharo Development <Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> Sent: Saturday, 24 November 2012, 17:06 Subject: [Pharo-project] Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean?
Hello Pharo Devs,
I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo.
I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly?
For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (Exposé, etc.).
Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert.
Best regards,
Sebastian
2012/11/25 Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse@inria.fr>:
May be you did not see it but adding polymorph was the first things we did even if the code was not perfect.
No no, I realized the addition of Polymorph. Although it is only now that I am starting to get active in open-source Smalltalk, I have been following it since the days of Squeak 3.X (maybe earlier - I heard about Smalltalk for the first time in 1998). I lived through the announcement of Pharo (without understanding, at that time, why all the fuzz). In my head I kept coming and going to/from Smalltalk, never being able to give it up ;-) No matter how hard I tried, or how disappointed I sometimes was, I was also hooked. I knew somewhere that there is something true and unique to it. My heart was/is somehow tied to Smalltalk, I guess, even if I'm painfully aware of many of its (current) shortcomings... But I digress... Yes, I noticed about Polymorph.
I often said to my students if you want to faint or vomit when you open Squeak (at that time I was maintaining squeak3.8or9) then this is normal we are working on it and one day it will be cool.
Hahaha! Well, it definitely looks ahem... different... than anything out there. But Squeak also took notice and somehow improved its looks a little bit in the last versions (since 4.2 or so). It took a lot of "faith", I guess. To look it to the face and in spite of the visual shortcomings say: but it will look cool in the future. Sometimes I think it would be awesome to be able to attract great designers. So many people designing great web-widgets, or Gnome/KDE skins, or even Winamp Skins... The visual aspect must not be underestimated. Fortunately Pharo right now has, for me, reached the state where I "can live with it" (visually). One thing I would like to investigate is how easy (or not) is to write new Polymorph-aware widgets.
So these is years that I want to get a vector graphics based ui and a lot more :)
That's great :-)
just help :) There are a lot of little tasks that can help us. Like checking if a bug is still a bug in the current version. I'm still learning a lot by trying (and I fail often) to fix something but I nearly always learn something.
Since you mention "helping" I would like to take this opportunity to mention what my plans for Smalltalk/Pharo are, and see if it can be beneficial to the project. For this, I better create a new topic...
thanks Just start small and work steadily. This is what I do and at the end I learned something I did not know before. Stef On Nov 25, 2012, at 3:02 PM, dimitris chloupis wrote:
"eye candy" wise this is exactly the focus of my Ephestos project , Morpheas section. A custom gui , gui designers for easy creating of GUIs by the user and additional moprh widget with customized look including eye candy.
I can't make any promises, as I have no clue what kind of obstacles and technical limitations I am going to find in the process but I can tell you I am willing to invest years and if all goes well even decades of efforts since its an area that I love to code for.
As a first part I am in the process of creating a tutorial generator which will be ProfStef on steroids for at first offering tutorial for Athens and later used for any kind of Pharo tutorial.
I am also interested in helping Athens porting to OpenGL and generally using NBOpenGL as the next step for Morphic. Excitting stuff the only thing it worries me is the type of technical blocks / obstacles I may come across but trying is certainly well worths it.
From: Sebastian Nozzi <sebnozzi@gmail.com> To: Pharo Development <Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr> Sent: Saturday, 24 November 2012, 17:06 Subject: [Pharo-project] Athens OpenGL backend - what does it mean?
Hello Pharo Devs,
I am really excited about the direction Pharo is taking regarding many areas - one of them being the graphics. I played with Athens a bit and it's cool to see anti-aliased vectror graphics coming to Pharo.
I keep reading about a possible OpenGL back-end in the future... what would this mean exactly?
For years I have been "dreaming" about graphic-accelerated "eye-candy" effects inside of the Smalltalk environment. Like compiz-fusion effects in Linux, or Quartz-Extreme powerded in OS-X (Exposé, etc.).
Would this be possible with such a back-end? Or am I misinterpreting things? I'm not a graphic-dev expert.
Best regards,
Sebastian
participants (4)
-
dimitris chloupis -
Igor Stasenko -
Sebastian Nozzi -
Stéphane Ducasse