On Nov 2, 2013, at 12:05 PM, Sergi Reyner <sergi.reyner@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone!
This is my first message to the list. I've been learning Smalltalk and toying with Pharo 2.0 for some weeks now.
Excellent
One thing that has me puzzled is the many different ways to build GUIs. I´m rewriting an app in Pharo as an exercise. It needs to display images in some parts. So far, I have:
- Sent messages to (UITheme builder) It is a facade and I do not really facade because they do not scale and are not modular.
- Created a SystemWindow, then #addMorph: to it, sending them #model: and so afterwards. this is the default programmatic way
If you are in a hurry use the two approaches above.
- Tried and somewhat succeeded in building my GUI with Spec, which apparently doesn't know about images. what do you mean about images. Spec is what we want to push so
- Read some stuff about Athens Athens is not about building app UI it is a rendering canvas
- Read some stuff about Morphic 3, and wondered if it will make its way into Pharo. Forget that. Truly. We are cleaning Morphic but slowly. We had a plan but it failed because people left.
- Read something about how Spec has changed a lot in Pharo 3.0 (which is labelled as alpha) Not that much but it is better
On top of that, as I understand it, building GUIs with Morphic was originally meant to be a visual live process, however what I've read so far takes a programmatic approach. Not necessarily.
So... many questions, few clues, I am lost. I definitely need to use some AlphaImageMorphs in certain parts of the application, and while I find Spec's way easier, I'm at a loss when it comes to that part.
Ok Ben will reply better than me. One way is to take 30 and extend Spec with support for images.
On the other hand, it's sold as "the new way to build GUIs" so I'm not sure if these are missing things that will be included later, or if I'm supposed to implement them on top of the Spec framework, or even if there´s already a way to do it and I just don't get it :S
Cheers, Sergi