Hey, This ones a bit more towards Adam :) How is Klein going? I know you're basically doing this alone... I talked a bit with Thomas about where the best point was, to start pushing self without getting lost on the way. There is so much to do and once you start fixing one thing you notice you have to go a layer deeper and deeper and deeper. Like my goal of writing a desktop background. Should be a easy start, I thought :), oh what a fool I was. I endet up with the glCanvas. But writing OpenGl glue for the current vm might too not be the right choice, maybe this should rather be done for Klein. So what do you think?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It seems to fit to the interest there was in porting self to the iPad, and I personally think multitouch fits our direct manipulation mantra well. Once we had full support of the single device fir Klein we Could port it to other platforms. But knowing exactly what hardware we are running on might help us the same way it helps apple compared to Microsoft or android. So again what do you think :)?
Cheers jan
Why the heck did I write Thomas, I meant Thorsten.:) Oh boy must have been late when I started writing...
Cheers
On 14.12.2010, at 15:51, Jan-Paul Bultmann janpaulbultmann@me.com wrote:
Hey, This ones a bit more towards Adam :) How is Klein going? I know you're basically doing this alone... I talked a bit with Thomas about where the best point was, to start pushing self without getting lost on the way. There is so much to do and once you start fixing one thing you notice you have to go a layer deeper and deeper and deeper. Like my goal of writing a desktop background. Should be a easy start, I thought :), oh what a fool I was. I endet up with the glCanvas. But writing OpenGl glue for the current vm might too not be the right choice, maybe this should rather be done for Klein. So what do you think?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It seems to fit to the interest there was in porting self to the iPad, and I personally think multitouch fits our direct manipulation mantra well. Once we had full support of the single device fir Klein we Could port it to other platforms. But knowing exactly what hardware we are running on might help us the same way it helps apple compared to Microsoft or android. So again what do you think :)?
Cheers jan
On 15/12/2010, at 1:51 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse. See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-do... for some examples of how an environment has to be designed for touch interaction. This is something Apple's been able to (and had to) put a bazillion person-hours into for the iPad OS.
Jason
On Dec 14, 2010, at 3:55 PM, Jason Grossman wrote:
On 15/12/2010, at 1:51 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse.
I think the opposite is the case. You can easily simulate a 3 button mouse with gestures, even if it is as simple as counting the fingers :). The size constraints as mentioned in the article could be easily solved by some zooming work.
We could then gradualy move the interface to be more touch friendly.
See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-do... for some examples of how an environment has to be designed for touch interaction. This is something Apple's been able to (and had to) put a bazillion person-hours into for the iPad OS.
And c'mon it's obvious why microsoft won't get close to the ipad :D they still do things like this ( http://www.pcmasters.de/fileadmin/news/Microsoft/Microsoft-Windows-Phone-7.j... ) which designer had the idea of leaving 1/5 of the screen unused so you can display a round button in the top right corner ... that will lead you to a list of everything on the phone that you can't even sort (like on the macbook wheel). :)
So my point is, as long as we don't do dumb shit we will be ok :)
UI2 is already a lot like multitouch interfaces for touch tables just take a look at things like PyMt http://pymt.eu/ and the demo reels at nuigroup http://nuigroup.com/tv/
The only things that are a bit different are the popup style menus in self, but that is nothing that a circular menu couldn't sovle :).
Jason
__._,_
I think the hard thing about this is not the design of the multitoch capable morphs. It is rather the rework of self's rendering system, that we should do before.
Cheers Jan
On 15/12/2010, at 4:06 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse.
I think the opposite is the case. You can easily simulate a 3 button mouse with gestures, even if it is as simple as counting the fingers :). The size constraints as mentioned in the article could be easily solved by some zooming work.
Good point: the Self world is zoomable in a way that mainstream OSs aren't, and that would solve some of the problems. But think about how far in you'd have to zoom to use a big fat finger instead of a mouse. I still think it would be problematic.
We could then gradualy move the interface to be more touch friendly.
Yes.
Jason
On Dec 15, 2010, at 12:52 AM, Jason Grossman wrote:
On 15/12/2010, at 4:06 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse.
I think the opposite is the case. You can easily simulate a 3 button mouse with gestures, even if it is as simple as counting the fingers :). The size constraints as mentioned in the article could be easily solved by some zooming work.
Good point: the Self world is zoomable in a way that mainstream OSs aren't, and that would solve some of the problems. But think about how far in you'd have to zoom to use a big fat finger instead of a mouse. I still think it would be problematic.
Yea the level of zoom required for some of the things in UI2 is propably problematic :D, like the tiny tiny "portal" in the core sampler. It's even hard to hit with a mouse :)
We could then gradualy move the interface to be more touch friendly.
Yes.
I personaly would like to see the style of the morphic world go towards something like the apple dasboard. Many differend self contained morphs with a distinct functionality. With big candy buttons :D
http://media.arstechnica.com/images/tiger/dashboard-big.jpg
My favorite of them is the calculator it feels like a real one, with the moving buttons e.t.c
Cheers Jan
Jason
On 15/12/2010, at 11:10 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
I personaly would like to see the style of the morphic world go towards something like the apple dasboard. Many differend self contained morphs with a distinct functionality. With big candy buttons :D
http://media.arstechnica.com/images/tiger/dashboard-big.jpg
My favorite of them is the calculator it feels like a real one, with the moving buttons e.t.c
I like this idea. One option would be to use Apple's Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptu...
I think looking polished is very very important. The current Self UI is already pretty good in this regard. I believe Squeak has suffered enormously from looking too much like a toy.
Jason
hello folks,
for me self is still one of the most beautiful languages I know, but some of the lib's are not so shapelily. So we have a kind of an Ugly Duckling here... a lady with amazing intrinsic values and horrible "lips"...
Of course, we can start with some cosmetics.. We can change the UI and other stuff, but for me that doesn't look like the right way... Self has so many unfinished stuff, that I guess we will not make it better to open another bottle.
Jan-Paul, if you really want to bring that stuff to the next level, let us finalize Klein first, as it is or as it was planned. A new platform would be cool, for sure! But this seams to me, is not the first step. This will need a lot of refactorings on different places. Over the last years a lot of people tried to enhance and clean up the self system - with more or less success. From my point of view, the main problem was that they/we tried to much in one step.
So let us start with a "small" step first... let us finalize Klein and then let us make the next step.
When I can help in any way, give me a note. My C++ knowledge is not really good enough, but maybe I can help in another way. If you want so, I can have a chat with your professor. I'm quite good connected to the german federal ministry of research and technology. if he/she is will to support you and maybe as well other students to work on self, i can take care of the fund raising for this project.
best regards
thorsten
--- In self-interest@yahoogroups.com, Jason Grossman <spam-me@...> wrote:
On 15/12/2010, at 11:10 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
I personaly would like to see the style of the morphic world go towards something like the apple dasboard. Many differend self contained morphs with a distinct functionality. With big candy buttons :D
http://media.arstechnica.com/images/tiger/dashboard-big.jpg
My favorite of them is the calculator it feels like a real one, with the moving buttons e.t.c
I like this idea. One option would be to use Apple's Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptu...
I think looking polished is very very important. The current Self UI is already pretty good in this regard. I believe Squeak has suffered enormously from looking too much like a toy.
Jason
On Dec 15, 2010, at 10:36 AM, thorsten_dittmar wrote:
hello folks,
for me self is still one of the most beautiful languages I know, but some of the lib's are not so shapelily. So we have a kind of an Ugly Duckling here... a lady with amazing intrinsic values and horrible "lips"...
Of course, we can start with some cosmetics.. We can change the UI and other stuff, but for me that doesn't look like the right way... Self has so many unfinished stuff, that I guess we will not make it better to open another bottle.
Jan-Paul, if you really want to bring that stuff to the next level, let us finalize Klein first, as it is or as it was planned. A new platform would be cool, for sure! But this seams to me, is not the first step. This will need a lot of refactorings on different places. Over the last years a lot of people tried to enhance and clean up the self system - with more or less success. From my point of view, the main problem was that they/we tried to much in one step.
So let us start with a "small" step first... let us finalize Klein and then let us make the next step.
This was kind of the idea I had, when I proposed a dedicated self platform. Say... like the beagle board (http://beagleboard.org/) and as a result the touchbook which is based on it. We could focus on one assembler for one processor, one grapics hardware e.t.c we could write the system completely self contained (I like the pun and will use self contained as completely written in self :D). So we would not have to worry to get klein running on this machine, with that ram or this gpu. I might be wrong with this though :)
When I can help in any way, give me a note. My C++ knowledge is not really good enough, but maybe I can help in another way. If you want so, I can have a chat with your professor. I'm quite good connected to the german federal ministry of research and technology. if he/she is will to support you and maybe as well other students to work on self, i can take care of the fund raising for this project.
There is a small project I have to finish first, to proof my worthyness ;) but once that is done I will try to get a custom undergraduate thesis about self, to get it rolling :)
best regards
thorsten
cheers Jan
--- In self-interest@yahoogroups.com, Jason Grossman <spam-me@...> wrote:
On 15/12/2010, at 11:10 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
I personaly would like to see the style of the morphic world go towards something like the apple dasboard. Many differend self contained morphs with a distinct functionality. With big candy buttons :D
http://media.arstechnica.com/images/tiger/dashboard-big.jpg
My favorite of them is the calculator it feels like a real one, with the moving buttons e.t.c
I like this idea. One option would be to use Apple's Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptu...
I think looking polished is very very important. The current Self UI is already pretty good in this regard. I believe Squeak has suffered enormously from looking too much like a toy.
Jason
This was kind of the idea I had, when I proposed a dedicated self platform. Say... like the beagle board (http://beagleboard.org/) and as a result the touchbook which is based on it.
got it, but if we go for a system like this, nearly nobody can help you. except of the people who have a system like this, or? would it be easier to finalize the Klein stuff on a mac or so?
We could focus on one assembler for one processor, one grapics hardware e.t.c we could write the system completely self contained (I like the pun and will use self contained as completely written in self :D). So we would not have to worry to get klein running on this machine, with that ram or this gpu. I might be wrong with this though :)
I'm not sure. When I was young... so long ago ;-) I was working for a company who did the Atari port for VisualWorks Smalltalk. It was always a lot of work to port the vm to another platform and a solid and working system on another platform was always a big help. So I guess, but maybe I'm wrong, it would be much easier to port self to another platform if we have done our homework already eg. on athe mac.
b r
thorsten
On Dec 15, 2010, at 6:05 PM, Thorsten Dittmar wrote:
This was kind of the idea I had, when I proposed a dedicated self platform. Say... like the beagle board (http://beagleboard.org/) and as a result the touchbook which is based on it.
got it, but if we go for a system like this, nearly nobody can help you. except of the people who have a system like this, or? would it be easier to finalize the Klein stuff on a mac or so?
We could focus on one assembler for one processor, one grapics hardware e.t.c we could write the system completely self contained (I like the pun and will use self contained as completely written in self :D). So we would not have to worry to get klein running on this machine, with that ram or this gpu. I might be wrong with this though :)
I'm not sure. When I was young... so long ago ;-) I was working for a company who did the Atari port for VisualWorks Smalltalk. It was always a lot of work to port the vm to another platform and a solid and working system on another platform was always a big help. So I guess, but maybe I'm wrong, it would be much easier to port self to another platform if we have done our homework already eg. on athe mac.
b r
Enhancing the current x86 compiler is reasonable. But I have to admit that I might have personal tendencies towards arm :). I hate x86 assembeler I really hate it :D I am currently building klein and will try to find out what is more in my reach :) enhancing the x86 or redoing the compiler for arm. It will depend on the modularity and workload.
Cheers Jan
thorsten
Enhancing the current x86 compiler is reasonable. But I have to admit that I might have personal tendencies towards arm :). I hate x86 assembeler I really hate it :D
LoL
I am currently building klein and will try to find out what is more in my reach :) enhancing the x86 or redoing the compiler for arm. It will depend on the modularity and workload.
good luck and have fun
If I remember correctly, Klein doesn't have an x86 assembler or compiler. It has a Sparc assembler, and a PowerPC assembler and compiler. (The Apple transition to Intel happened right around the time when Klein was being cancelled at Sun.)
Adam
--- In self-interest@yahoogroups.com, Jan-Paul Bultmann <janpaulbultmann@...> wrote:
On Dec 15, 2010, at 6:05 PM, Thorsten Dittmar wrote:
This was kind of the idea I had, when I proposed a dedicated self platform. Say... like the beagle board (http://beagleboard.org/) and as a result the touchbook which is based on it.
got it, but if we go for a system like this, nearly nobody can help you. except of the people who have a system like this, or? would it be easier to finalize the Klein stuff on a mac or so?
We could focus on one assembler for one processor, one grapics hardware e.t.c we could write the system completely self contained (I like the pun and will use self contained as completely written in self :D). So we would not have to worry to get klein running on this machine, with that ram or this gpu. I might be wrong with this though :)
I'm not sure. When I was young... so long ago ;-) I was working for a company who did the Atari port for VisualWorks Smalltalk. It was always a lot of work to port the vm to another platform and a solid and working system on another platform was always a big help. So I guess, but maybe I'm wrong, it would be much easier to port self to another platform if we have done our homework already eg. on athe mac.
b r
Enhancing the current x86 compiler is reasonable. But I have to admit that I might have personal tendencies towards arm :). I hate x86 assembeler I really hate it :D I am currently building klein and will try to find out what is more in my reach :) enhancing the x86 or redoing the compiler for arm. It will depend on the modularity and workload.
Cheers Jan
thorsten
On Dec 15, 2010, at 7:33 PM, Adam wrote:
If I remember correctly, Klein doesn't have an x86 assembler or compiler. It has a Sparc assembler, and a PowerPC assembler and compiler. (The Apple transition to Intel happened right around the time when Klein was being cancelled at Sun.)
Oh noes, that would explain why I can't get it to build... 10.6 dropped Rosetta. So when we want to use it on a platform that is not only used in SuperComputers today we have to go the arm or 86 way. And I would then choose the ARM due to simplicity in the Assembler. (A Sparc laptop would be rad though :D).
Cheers Jan
Adam
--- In self-interest@yahoogroups.com, Jan-Paul Bultmann <janpaulbultmann@...> wrote:
On Dec 15, 2010, at 6:05 PM, Thorsten Dittmar wrote:
This was kind of the idea I had, when I proposed a dedicated self platform. Say... like the beagle board (http://beagleboard.org/) and as a result the touchbook which is based on it.
got it, but if we go for a system like this, nearly nobody can help you. except of the people who have a system like this, or? would it be easier to finalize the Klein stuff on a mac or so?
We could focus on one assembler for one processor, one grapics hardware e.t.c we could write the system completely self contained (I like the pun and will use self contained as completely written in self :D). So we would not have to worry to get klein running on this machine, with that ram or this gpu. I might be wrong with this though :)
I'm not sure. When I was young... so long ago ;-) I was working for a company who did the Atari port for VisualWorks Smalltalk. It was always a lot of work to port the vm to another platform and a solid and working system on another platform was always a big help. So I guess, but maybe I'm wrong, it would be much easier to port self to another platform if we have done our homework already eg. on athe mac.
b r
Enhancing the current x86 compiler is reasonable. But I have to admit that I might have personal tendencies towards arm :). I hate x86 assembeler I really hate it :D I am currently building klein and will try to find out what is more in my reach :) enhancing the x86 or redoing the compiler for arm. It will depend on the modularity and workload.
Cheers Jan
thorsten
Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 20:20:23 +0100
On Dec 15, 2010, at 7:33 PM, Adam wrote:
If I remember correctly, Klein doesn't have an x86 assembler or compiler. It has a Sparc assembler, and a PowerPC assembler and compiler. (The Apple transition to Intel happened right around the time when Klein was being cancelled at Sun.)
That is what I remember too, but weren't there at least some stubs for x86 or 68000 processors? I would have to look at it again... yeah, just a i386 stub.
Oh noes, that would explain why I can't get it to build... 10.6 dropped Rosetta.
That shouldn't matter. What processor the Self VM used to support Klein uses has not relation to what processor Klein itself understands since you could consider Klein to be a cross compiler.
So when we want to use it on a platform that is not only used in SuperComputers today we have to go the arm or 86 way. And I would then choose the ARM due to simplicity in the Assembler. (A Sparc laptop would be rad though :D).
I think at some point Self was running on the Sun SPARCstation Voyager, which is pretty close to a laptop. And there used to be a Sparc laptop from a company called Tadpole.
About the general issue of Self hardware, however, it is important to remember that the major reason why the language failed to become more popular was that it required you to buy a very specific computer to run it on. My most expensive investment to date was exactly a Sun Ultra 5 machine in 1998 just to be able to use Self at home instead of depending on the university. The Mac version in 2000 changed things, but this was also a machine that few people had and by then the reputation of Self as unavailable was hard to reverse.
Now if you are talking about gathering a group of people to restart the development of Klein then it makes perfect sense to have all the programmers use the same hardware as their initial target in order not to waste time on porting issues in the begining.
Most people on this list are probably very tired of hearing about this, but since we have newcomers I should mention that I worked on Self specific hardware from 1998 to 2008. At that point I joined a group of people who were already investing in Squeak Smalltalk so I changed the focus of my designs. But I still feel that my unimplemented RISC42 processor would be a great target for Klein:
http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware/RISC42/
Note that at the board level, I use programmable logic (FPGAs) to implement my SiliconSqueak processor. This means that the boards could have RISC42 instead. Or even the Leon3, which is a very robust open source implementation of Sparc.
-- Jecel
On Dec 15, 2010, at 8:11 AM, Jason Grossman wrote:
On 15/12/2010, at 11:10 AM, Jan-Paul Bultmann wrote:
I personaly would like to see the style of the morphic world go towards something like the apple dasboard. Many differend self contained morphs with a distinct functionality. With big candy buttons :D
http://media.arstechnica.com/images/tiger/dashboard-big.jpg
My favorite of them is the calculator it feels like a real one, with the moving buttons e.t.c
I like this idea. One option would be to use Apple's Human Interface Guidelines: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptu...
Awesome idea, though I'd rather use these http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/AppleApplications/Conc..., they are a bit simpler :), so people will rather read it. And they are optimized for small widget or morphs :) that don't have to be that constrained in their design since they are graspable in an instant anyways. :)
I think looking polished is very very important. The current Self UI is already pretty good in this regard. I believe Squeak has suffered enormously from looking too much like a toy.
True, looking pro is darn important.
Jason
I'd love to have Self on a touch device, but I don't think it makes sense as a community focus (yet).
Seems to me that we're in the early stages of one of those resource management games - where you need to focus on getting the stuff that lets you build other stuff. In our case that means getting more active developers so we can work on a broader range of features.
The obvious move is a windows port, in which case Klein and maybe an OpenGL/GLUT layer make sense (assuming I fully understand what Klein brings to the party). Any other thoughts?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse. See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-do... for some examples of how an environment has to be designed for touch interaction. This is something Apple's been able to (and had to) put a bazillion person-hours into for the iPad OS.
Jason
Yahoo! Groups Links
To be honest, I don't think Klein makes sense at this time. It's too experimental and there's too much new work needed to be done on it.
Porting the existing C++ VM to Windows and also ARM is a straight forward exercise treading an already travelled path: the VM has already moved from Solaris->Mac OS X->Linux and Sparc->PPC->x86
All that is needed is someone with time and suitable C++ skills. (Btw, if there is anyone qualified and interested in the task it might even be possible for some resources to be found to help fund it.)
- Russell
On 28/12/2010, at 4:20 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
I'd love to have Self on a touch device, but I don't think it makes sense as a community focus (yet).
Seems to me that we're in the early stages of one of those resource management games - where you need to focus on getting the stuff that lets you build other stuff. In our case that means getting more active developers so we can work on a broader range of features.
The obvious move is a windows port, in which case Klein and maybe an OpenGL/GLUT layer make sense (assuming I fully understand what Klein brings to the party). Any other thoughts?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse. See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-do... for some examples of how an environment has to be designed for touch interaction. This is something Apple's been able to (and had to) put a bazillion person-hours into for the iPad OS.
Jason
Yahoo! Groups Links
I was talking about the dev environment for Klein on an arm not because I wanted everybody to drop everything and get a beagle board, that would probably hit the wall pretty fast. It was merely to get some ideas and discussion. I gathered some friends, they are not that interested in self (one can't blame them, they are either total c freaks or the java generation...hope that will change :)), but they started to drool when I told them about a free beagleboard in exchange for some thoughts on compiler development. Maybe they will catch the bait and I can collect a small Klein team over here :D So don't worry about it any longer, just wait :)
Cheers Jan
On Dec 28, 2010, at 6:55 AM, Russell Allen wrote:
To be honest, I don't think Klein makes sense at this time. It's too experimental and there's too much new work needed to be done on it.
I totally agree on that :)
Porting the existing C++ VM to Windows and also ARM is a straight forward exercise treading an already travelled path: the VM has already moved from Solaris->Mac OS X->Linux and Sparc->PPC->x86
All that is needed is someone with time and suitable C++ skills. (Btw, if there is anyone qualified and interested in the task it might even be possible for some resources to be found to help fund it.)
I would love to do that, but I don't have any c++ skills and don't plan to get them :D
- Russell
On 28/12/2010, at 4:20 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
I'd love to have Self on a touch device, but I don't think it makes sense as a community focus (yet).
Totally agree on that too.
Seems to me that we're in the early stages of one of those resource management games - where you need to focus on getting the stuff that lets you build other stuff. In our case that means getting more active developers so we can work on a broader range of features.
The obvious move is a windows port, in which case Klein and maybe an OpenGL/GLUT layer make sense (assuming I fully understand what Klein brings to the party). Any other thoughts?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse. See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-do... for some examples of how an environment has to be designed for touch interaction. This is something Apple's been able to (and had to) put a bazillion person-hours into for the iPad OS.
Jason
Yahoo! Groups Links
Well I have followed self for some time. To be frank for few months I have diverted from compiler development, but I wont mind working on a C++ port of VM.
On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 4:56 PM, Jan-Paul Bultmann janpaulbultmann@me.comwrote:
I was talking about the dev environment for Klein on an arm not because I wanted everybody to drop everything and get a beagle board, that would probably hit the wall pretty fast. It was merely to get some ideas and discussion. I gathered some friends, they are not that interested in self (one can't blame them, they are either total c freaks or the java generation...hope that will change :)), but they started to drool when I told them about a free beagleboard in exchange for some thoughts on compiler development. Maybe they will catch the bait and I can collect a small Klein team over here :D So don't worry about it any longer, just wait :)
Cheers Jan
On Dec 28, 2010, at 6:55 AM, Russell Allen wrote:
To be honest, I don't think Klein makes sense at this time. It's too experimental and there's too much new work needed to be done on it.
I totally agree on that :)
Porting the existing C++ VM to Windows and also ARM is a straight forward exercise treading an already travelled path: the VM has already moved from Solaris->Mac OS X->Linux and Sparc->PPC->x86
All that is needed is someone with time and suitable C++ skills. (Btw, if there is anyone qualified and interested in the task it might even be possible for some resources to be found to help fund it.)
I would love to do that, but I don't have any c++ skills and don't plan to get them :D
- Russell
On 28/12/2010, at 4:20 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
I'd love to have Self on a touch device, but I don't think it makes sense as a community focus (yet).
Totally agree on that too.
Seems to me that we're in the early stages of one of those resource management games - where you need to focus on getting the stuff that lets you build other stuff. In our case that means getting more active developers so we can work on a broader range of features.
The obvious move is a windows port, in which case Klein and maybe an OpenGL/GLUT layer make sense (assuming I fully understand what Klein brings to the party). Any other thoughts?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main
supported platform for self.
I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be
a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse. See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-do... some examples of how an environment has to be designed for touch interaction. This is something Apple's been able to (and had to) put a bazillion person-hours into for the iPad OS.
Jason
Yahoo! Groups Links
How much would it help to port the UI to OpenGL (not changing the Self UI at all, just hooking into OpenGL for drawing/user events instead of the native APIs)? I've looked at it before and it feels like a do-able task, but if it's only 5% of the porting work....
Are there any other changes that would minimize the amount of work needed for ports? I'm not at all familiar with Klein, but are there chunks of work that we could pull from C++ into Self?
Other than that I'm with you - I could only help by putting money into a Self-on-Windows kitty.
To be honest, I don't think Klein makes sense at this time. It's too experimental and there's too much new work needed to be done on it.
Porting the existing C++ VM to Windows and also ARM is a straight forward exercise treading an already travelled path: the VM has already moved from Solaris->Mac OS X->Linux and Sparc->PPC->x86
All that is needed is someone with time and suitable C++ skills. (Btw, if there is anyone qualified and interested in the task it might even be possible for some resources to be found to help fund it.)
- Russell
On 28/12/2010, at 4:20 PM, Josh Flowers wrote:
I'd love to have Self on a touch device, but I don't think it makes sense as a community focus (yet).
Seems to me that we're in the early stages of one of those resource management games - where you need to focus on getting the stuff that lets you build other stuff. In our case that means getting more active developers so we can work on a broader range of features.
The obvious move is a windows port, in which case Klein and maybe an OpenGL/GLUT layer make sense (assuming I fully understand what Klein brings to the party). Any other thoughts?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It might be good to focus on one platform, but I don't think it should be a touchpad. Self would have to change a LOT to be useable without a mouse. See http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/07/ballmer-and-microsoft-still-do... for some examples of how an environment has to be designed for touch interaction. This is something Apple's been able to (and had to) put a bazillion person-hours into for the iPad OS.
Jason
Yahoo! Groups Links
I haven't done any Klein hacking in over a year. Just don't have time for it these days. I'd love to see Klein become more fleshed-out and usable, but there's lots of work left to do. (http://kleinvm.sourceforge.net/todo.html has an incomplete list.) If you're interested in taking a crack at it yourself, feel free to fork the GitHub project (https://github.com/AdamSpitz/klein), and I'll be glad to answer questions to help you get going. :)
Adam
--- In self-interest@yahoogroups.com, Jan-Paul Bultmann <janpaulbultmann@...> wrote:
Hey, This ones a bit more towards Adam :) How is Klein going? I know you're basically doing this alone... I talked a bit with Thomas about where the best point was, to start pushing self without getting lost on the way. There is so much to do and once you start fixing one thing you notice you have to go a layer deeper and deeper and deeper. Like my goal of writing a desktop background. Should be a easy start, I thought :), oh what a fool I was. I endet up with the glCanvas. But writing OpenGl glue for the current vm might too not be the right choice, maybe this should rather be done for Klein. So what do you think?
The other thing is, maybe we should pick a device and make it the main supported platform for self. I was thinking about something like this http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/products/touchbook.htm
It seems to fit to the interest there was in porting self to the iPad, and I personally think multitouch fits our direct manipulation mantra well. Once we had full support of the single device fir Klein we Could port it to other platforms. But knowing exactly what hardware we are running on might help us the same way it helps apple compared to Microsoft or android. So again what do you think :)?
Cheers jan
self-interest@lists.selflanguage.org
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Adam -
Dexter Mishra -
Jan-Paul Bultmann -
Jason Grossman -
Jecel Assumpcao Jr. -
Josh Flowers -
Russell Allen -
Thorsten Dittmar -
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