Re: libseed-list GSoC 2010 Ideas

[Brian McKenna <puffnfresh gmail com>]

Wow! Thanks for the fast response.

On 6 April 2010 11:45, Tim Horton <hortont424 gmail com> wrote:
> On 2010.04.05, at 9:33 PM, Brian McKenna wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>
>> I'm just sending in a few ideas I have for Google Summer of Code. I'd
>> really appreciate any feedback!
>>
>> My first idea is a jQuery-like library. The library would provide
>> wrappers around Gnome libraries (such as GTK, GLib/Gio, Clutter) and
>> make it very simple to use CSS like selectors, make AJAX-like
>> requests, get values of GTK widgets, do simple animations (fade and
>> property tweening), etc. The purpose is to just make it extremely
>> simple for web developers to make Gnome-based applications.
>
> I'm not totally clear what this would look like, but it sounds possibly interesting.

Possibly something like this:

    $ = imports.dollar;
    Gtk = imports.gi.Gtk;
    Gtk.init(Seed.argv);

    var window = new Gtk.Window({"title": "Test"});
    $(window).quit(function(event) {
        Gtk.main_quit();
    });

    var exit_button = new Gtk.Button({"label": "Exit"});
    $(window).append(exit_button);

    var quit_button = new Gtk.Button({"label": "Quit"});
    $(window).append(quit_button);

    $(window).children().click(function(event) {
        print($(event.target).attr("label"));
        $(window).quit();
    });

    Gtk.main();

Sorry for the strange example. The $ helper might have to be changed
if it was too confusing for jQuery developers. As you can see, I'm
trying to model it very similar to using jQuery on the web.

>> My second idea is to provide the HTML5 API in Seed. It'd be nice to be
>> able to use Canvas, WebGL, Local Storage, Web Sockets, Drag and Drop,
>> Web Workers and Web Media (the video and audio element API). The
>> purpose for this is similar to the first idea - I want to make desktop
>> development familiar to web developers.
>>
>> Johan Dahlin has done a little bit of work on this front by
>> implementing Canvas for GJS:
>>
>> http://blogs.gnome.org/johan/2010/03/30/bridging-the-development-gap-between-desktop-and-web/
>
> Seed's had canvas semi-implemented for a while:
>
> http://git.gnome.org/browse/seed/tree/modules/canvas/seed-canvas.c
>
> http://git.gnome.org/browse/seed/tree/modules/canvas/run-tests.js

I must have missed that module. Thanks.

> The others would be interesting, too... though I think at least *part* of the idea with Seed was to have very little platform of its own, providing a simple scripting language that *just* wraps the GNOME platform.
>
> That's not to say it's a poor idea, but it's definitely something that the various people using Seed now should discuss and try to come to a consensus on, since Robb and I don't have a particular roadmap at this point (obviously).

An honest question (I'm not trying to make an argument). If Seed is
just a wrapper, why was the Canvas module created (which is just
another wrapper for Cairo, right)? Is it just that the Canvas module
is a proof of concept?

I've seen that GNOME Shell is using CSS and JavaScript (partly because
of the popularity of JavaScript web developers). Do you think these
projects are more suited to GJS, then? I have asked here because I
have a bit more experience with Seed and so far have preferred using
it.

>> What do you think? What are the chances of these projects being
>> chosen? Would this project or Summer of Code be more suited to GJS?
>>
>> Thanks for your help,
>> Brian McKenna
>> _______________________________________________
>> libseed-list mailing list
>> libseed-list gnome org
>> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/libseed-list