Self-interest November 2010

self-interest@lists.selflanguage.org

7 participants
9 discussions

Adaptive Rendering.
by Jan-Paul Bultmann 21 Nov '10

21 Nov '10

Hey, I read about the adaptive rendering for Merlin and found it quite interesting. But is it still relevant? Even the weakest computers today have decent 3D capabilitys. Cheers Jan

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Creating Images
by Jan-Paul Bultmann 14 Nov '10

14 Nov '10

Hey is there a straigtforward way to create an image from the sources? Whats the way for the normal distribution image? Cheers Jan

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Re: [self-interest] Mythical 3Dui
by Jan-Paul Bultmann 14 Nov '10

14 Nov '10

> > Morphic (the graphical object framework underlying Kansas) was originally > > designed to support arbitrary scaling It's funny, I stumbled upon that piece of legacy code that hinders transparency when looking for places were I could put my scaling code :P To me it seems that one of the reasons to go into 3d space was because ui2 clutteres quickly. It really does once you start messing with the worldMorph which has enough slots to fill 20 screens in total and will fill 2 when just browsing one category^^. But I think the key problem is really zooming the radar simply doesn't cut it here. 3d wouldn't solve that too, simply more stuff behind more stuff^^. This may be not that horrible to implement when the scaling is done in the canvas. Quartz for example should support that out of the box. Cheers Jan On Nov 13, 2010, at 11:13 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote: > Randy Smith wrote on Sat, 13 Nov 2010 13:12:29 -0800 > > We had an attempt at ui3, connecting a 3D library (was it open GL?) > > to objects in Self. > > John Maloney mentioned XGL in: > > http://www.merlintec.com/old-self-interest/msg00346.html > > > This work was done by a student of Andy VanDam at Brown. A > > sample environment or two were created in 3D, but a full 3D > > programming environment felt just too clunky at the time. > > Interesting! I had seen this later discusion and it had given me the > impression that Brown wasn't involved in the GUI work: > > http://www.merlintec.com/old-self-interest/msg00476.html > > Their course was great - too bad it died out. > > > One environment had a bunch of bouncing boxes in a 3D world ... > > you could grab and move a box with the mouse. There was a > > special key combo with which to "go meta" -- which in this case > > meant going "out of body." Your point of view backs away and you > > see the frame and camera through which you had been viewing > > the world. With the frame and camera as reachable objects, you > > could move them around, attach the frame to a bouncing box, or > > pull the camera away from the frame to give it a more telephoto > > view of the environment. There was an "anti-meta" operation to > > let you resume use of any frame-camera pair you might find. > > This was a very good idea. In Teleplace (commercial version of Croquet) > you can use the mouse scroll wheel to "step back". Your avatar doesn't > move, so this changes from a first person viewpoint to a third person > viewpoint. You see your cursor as a ray shooting out of the avatar, but > you don't see the old frame you were using. > > The meta idea fits in well with the Morphic ideal. But sometimes it is > nice to have more direct ways to navigate. Moving a long way in Kansas, > for example, is very awkward when you have to carry along an object > because you have to keep dropping it to deal with the radar view for the > next little step. I added navigation using the arrow keys in one Self > snapshot I used a lot to avoid this. > > -- Jecel > >

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Re: [self-interest] Mythical 3Dui
by Randy 13 Nov '10

13 Nov '10

We had an attempt at ui3, connecting a 3D library (was it open GL?) to objects in Self. This work was done by a student of Andy VanDam at Brown. A sample environment or two were created in 3D, but a full 3D programming environment felt just too clunky at the time. One environment had a bunch of bouncing boxes in a 3D world ... you could grab and move a box with the mouse. There was a special key combo with which to "go meta" -- which in this case meant going "out of body." Your point of view backs away and you see the frame and camera through which you had been viewing the world. With the frame and camera as reachable objects, you could move them around, attach the frame to a bouncing box, or pull the camera away from the frame to give it a more telephoto view of the environment. There was an "anti-meta" operation to let you resume use of any frame-camera pair you might find. --Randy On Nov 13, 2010, at 5:33 PM, Jecel Assumpcao Jr. wrote: > Russell Allen wrote: > > As far as I know there are only two guis in 4.4 - iu1 and ui2 (which > > is morphic). Neither is particularily 3D though 'ui1' has a nice boxy look. > > I do remember some mention of experimental code besides ui1 and ui2, but > couldn't find it again in a quick search. Certainly it wouldn't be > something that would be included in an "official" release at any point > in the past. I did find an email from me asking about it in 1996, but > there was no reply: > > http://www.merlintec.com/old-self-interest/msg00858.html > > Ah, I see that a little earlier I had found that out by looking at > benchmarks listed in papers about Self: > > http://www.merlintec.com/old-self-interest/msg00895.html > > > We probably should make ui1 an optional install for the core > > clean.snap for 4.5 to reduce confusion. > > That would be great. If I remember correctly, ui1 wasn't available at > all when Self 4.0 came out. Many of its interesting features was > included in ui2, but enough were not that it is nice to be able to play > with the old code as well. > > > On 13/11/2010, at 10:28 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote: > > Hey, > > I see the traces of some sort of 3d Gui, but I can't find any information about it. > > Could you give me some vague overview^^? > > I'll mention some related project: > > Nick Drew created a very interesting 3D program visualization > environment for Self, which he announced here: > > http://www.merlintec.com/old-self-interest/msg00630.html > > Unfortunately, the pages mentioned there vanished long ago and can't > even be found in archive.org. They included many neat pictures and some > movies. > > I had the intention of creating a 3D GUI for Self and implemented a > quick prototype (first in GW Basic, then in ARM assembly language): > > http://www.merlintec.com/lsi/gui.html > > The idea was to build it in an alternative to OpenGL style systems > called "adaptive rendering" because it was similar in some ways to the > adaptive compilation in the Self VM: > > http://www.merlintec.com/lsi/gmodel.html > > -- Jecel > >

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Mythical 3Dui
by Jan-Paul Bultmann 13 Nov '10

13 Nov '10

Hey, I see the traces of some sort of 3d Gui, but I can't find any information about it. Could you give me some vague overview^^? Cheers Jan

3 2

Should we move issue tracker to Github?
by Russell Allen 12 Nov '10

12 Nov '10

Jan-Paul has added a graphics issue to both the default issue tracker on Github and also the 'official' tracker on LighthouseApp. We haven't properly started keeping track of issues, so moving isn't a problem, and there is an advantage in having all the development stuff on Github in one place, especially if we are using the Github wiki (although I think Lighthouse is a better bugtracker). What do you all think? Stay on Lighthouse or consolidate everything on Github? Cheers, Russell

2 1

wikiwiki
by Jan-Paul Bultmann 12 Nov '10

12 Nov '10

Hey, theres a lot I am currently learning of the dos and don'ts in ui2 (Like transparency ...^^). I think a wiki is the way to go, is there any chance to get such a thing?^^ The github wiki would propably work for now :) Cheers Jan

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Comments & UI
by Jan-Paul Bultmann 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

Hey, As I'm fooling around with the word, trying to create a background picture:D, I really have a hard time understanding some of the objects (why has the arrow head, the tail and the body the ability to draw itself for example), documentation is really lacking. So what do you think of a small game^^ we create a counter for objects with comments, and who gets the most points wins at the end of the week :D. I am currently trying hard to create a look like the one of Quartz Composer, I like Nextstep, but grey may be a bit out^^. What do you think? Cheers Jan

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USBs
by matteric1 02 Nov '10

02 Nov '10

Anyone communicated through USBs with self? I'm an old C programmer working on a new project that involves communicating with microcontrollers and trying to decide if i should do this in C# or can Self do the job.

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Self-interest November 2010