Spec vs Brick vs Glamour vs Morphic vs WTF?
Ok! I'm really confused. I'm wanting to write new GUI and I have no idea which framework to use. There is very little documentation on any of these and I don't see a clear cut statement of direction as to where the Pharo community is heading. Can someone please advise? Thanks. ----- Brad Selfridge -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178.h... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
On 06/07/2016 15:43, Brad Selfridge wrote:
Ok! I'm really confused. I'm wanting to write new GUI and I have no idea which framework to use. There is very little documentation on any of these and I don't see a clear cut statement of direction as to where the Pharo community is heading.
Can someone please advise?
Thanks.
Hi,
From what I know:
Morphic is the low level layer behind GUI in Pharo. Since this is low level there is usually some framework on top for users to use. Spec is a framework to build GUI. Brick is a work in progress. There is a project call Bloc that will replace Morphic in the future. Brick is a layer on top of Bloc to build widgets on top of Bloc. Glamour is good to use if you work a lot with some flux of data. Each elements of a Glamour panel will be feed by data from another element. It is good to use when you have, for example, elements to update on a list selection or thing like that. I hope this will help you to make your choice. So Morphic will vanish in few years. Bloc and brick will replace it. I think there is a Moose book with a Glamour chapter. And the community is writing a book on spec I think.
----- Brad Selfridge -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178.h... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
-- Cyril Ferlicot http://www.synectique.eu 165 Avenue Bretagne Lille 59000 France
So, once Brick/Bloc become public, will it become the default UI framework? What happens to Spec and Glamour when/if that happens? ----- Brad Selfridge -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178p4... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Hi Brad, to clarify the situation: Spec is the standard UI framework for Pharo, and the plan is that it will stay this way. Morphic/Brick/Block/⦠are (or will be) a layer underneath that, which ideally you would not need care about. The documentation of Spec is not up to date right now, and hard to find. But the good news is that I am working on it this very week (and next week). Please hang tight for a few more days, I will publicly release a work-in-progress documentation soon. For now, you can have a look at the youtube video of my presentation at the Pharo days 2 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL23s9ZUIR0 it should already point you in the right direction. -- Does this mail seem too brief? Sorry for that, I donât mean to be rude! Please see http://emailcharter.org . Johan Fabry - http://pleiad.cl/~jfabry PLEIAD and RyCh labs - Computer Science Department (DCC) - University of Chile
On Jul 6, 2016, at 11:14, Brad Selfridge <bsselfridge@gmail.com> wrote:
So, once Brick/Bloc become public, will it become the default UI framework? What happens to Spec and Glamour when/if that happens?
----- Brad Selfridge -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178p4... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Hi, Just to share my experience as a newbie with Pharo/Smalltalk and how I deal with the diversity of graphical toolkits, which in my case was pretty problem related. I want to create some kind of "app"[1][2] that used trees as structuring metaphor for interactive documents. The easiest way to program it was using Glamour and this gave me a quick functional prototype, but when I started to stretch the functionality even more Glamour, showed it limitations and in that case, spec and particularly Johan's spec-glamour bridge, has been really empowering for more general interfaces, without loosing the interactivity part given by GT playgrounds. Still there is a lot of work to be done and after finishing the Pharo MOOC I will be retaking my project again, but I would tell that spec is a solid toolkit and your choice doesn't need to be binary. You can start with one toolkit, like in my case and combine with other or refactor the code to migrate functionality. If you have enough time (for example don't have any rush for a quick & dirty prototype), I would advice to start with spec with the tranquility that it will be there in the time to come, and that the bindings with Glamour, Bloc, Brick and Morphic, will let you extent the interface when the need arises. [1] http://smalltalkhub.com/#!/~Offray/Grafoscopio [2] http://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/index.en.html Cheers, Offray On 06/07/16 11:11, Johan Fabry wrote:
Hi Brad,
to clarify the situation: Spec is the standard UI framework for Pharo, and the plan is that it will stay this way. Morphic/Brick/Block/⦠are (or will be) a layer underneath that, which ideally you would not need care about.
The documentation of Spec is not up to date right now, and hard to find. But the good news is that I am working on it this very week (and next week). Please hang tight for a few more days, I will publicly release a work-in-progress documentation soon. For now, you can have a look at the youtube video of my presentation at the Pharo days 2 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL23s9ZUIR0 it should already point you in the right direction.
-- Does this mail seem too brief? Sorry for that, I donât mean to be rude! Please see http://emailcharter.org .
Johan Fabry - http://pleiad.cl/~jfabry PLEIAD and RyCh labs - Computer Science Department (DCC) - University of Chile
On Jul 6, 2016, at 11:14, Brad Selfridge <bsselfridge@gmail.com> wrote:
So, once Brick/Bloc become public, will it become the default UI framework? What happens to Spec and Glamour when/if that happens?
----- Brad Selfridge -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178p4... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
The only GUI API inside the standard Pharo image is Morphic. Everything else are just Helper APIs , aka APIs that make easier to use Morphic. They basically sit on top of Morphic making use of its functionality and abilities. Actually there are more than the ones you mentioned. Bloc will be the future replacement for Morphic but even when Bloc replaces Morphic will not radical change things because it is compatible with Morphic. In short Morphic currently is unavoidable. However there are APIs to make creating GUIs easier with Morphic without necessarily requiring from you to know how to use Morphic. Spec is such example as is Brick as well. Glamour falls under the category of a specialised helpers because it mostly meant to be used for the creation of browsers not for general purpose APIs. However that does not mean Morphic is not "high level" , it actually comes with a lot of ready made widgets to make your life easier. It does however have a lot of nasty parts too and this is why you see so many APIs around you that confuse you. In reality each one of them solves a slightly diffirent problem and each one of them have a different style. So see it as more alternative solutions to choose from which is good. If you want to do something demanding GUI wise, you will be learning Morphic anyway because its the engine that drives all this APIs currently, in the future those APIs may work on top of Bloc , but since Bloc wants to be compatible with Morphic this is good news for you because you can carry your knowledge about Morphic to Bloc. Spec is good if you want to quickly make GUIs without heavy customization. You could also use multiple of them at the same time depending on the widgets you plan to design and do the difficult parts in pure Morphic, any API you use you always have access to the Morphic widgets it uses called "Morphs" anyway. Because Spec is the one with the best documentation, I advise to start with Spec and depending on your needs you can start to worry about Morphic later on. Generally speaking you dont need to panic, people around here are very happy to answer any question you may have, so even without documentation its very unlikely that you will be left alone to figure things out by yourself. So start experimenting and ask a ton of questions. On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 5:26 PM Brad Selfridge <bsselfridge@gmail.com> wrote:
Ok! I'm really confused. I'm wanting to write new GUI and I have no idea which framework to use. There is very little documentation on any of these and I don't see a clear cut statement of direction as to where the Pharo community is heading.
Can someone please advise?
Thanks.
----- Brad Selfridge -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178.h... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Thank you all for your responses. I have to admit that I was really confused. I will start the process with Spec. ----- Brad Selfridge -- View this message in context: http://forum.world.st/Spec-vs-Brick-vs-Glamour-vs-Morphic-vs-WTF-tp4905178p4... Sent from the Pharo Smalltalk Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
participants (5)
-
Brad Selfridge -
Cyril Ferlicot Delbecque -
Dimitris Chloupis -
Johan Fabry -
Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas