World: r3wp

The current GUI style is just to see anything at all. Henrik has 
a concept how to decouple the decoration and look from the rest. 
We need to get this up & running in a way that it's not changing 
on a dayly base. Than we will release it and you can start doing 
all the nice GUI looks.

I understand that no significant effort has been spent on getting 
things to look sharp - I don't see why the people who are actually 
doing work feel the need to apologize or defend the current situation 
- I agree this is the way it has to be done. I was just wondering 
if, in parallel (and by people other than the developers), some artwork 
could be produced with various proposed looks for the UI. Having 
some artwork doesn't imply that a corresponding look has to be implemented. 
It's just something that people can look at.

I guess I'm just thinking that there should be as many looks as possible 
submitted for the community to decide on as the official, or one 
of the official looks.

This shouldn't distract from the GUI work being done in code, should 
it?

I'm just curious to see what the overall concensus would be here 
- there have been so many fads in UI design 3D, aqua-look, flat, 
etc. What is attractive now and for the medium term? Another thing 
I'd like to see are proposals that break away from the traditioanal 
and try to push the envelope. This could possibly involve the use 
of animation, 2 1/2 D, gestures (yes, I know you don't think much 
of  this kind of stuff Henrik :-) , but not in frivolous ways. Personally, 
I hate cluttered UIs that don't do anything to improve usability.

Defense of situation: Because the foremost thing that has been criticized, 
when posting screenshots is the appearance of the GUI, as I was experimenting 
with a skin early on, which was dropped. As creators of professional 
UI systems know, looks are secondary, while functionality and consistency 
is primary. This is a point, I've been trying to make with the VID 
Extension Kit.

The problem with creating artwork now is that there is not a good 
method to implement it, other than by having to get your hands dirty 
and write the styles. There's no easy way to shove photoshop images 
into the R3 GUI. Maybe that will happen at some point. Feel free 
to post imagery if you like, but I'm afraid it's a bit of a waste 
of time right now.

yeah, the way some people have worded things (don't want to name 
names, but we know who they are :-)  ), there was a critical tone 
- IMO, they missed the point of what was shown so far

Of course I don't expect that artwork can just be dropped in and 
we have a new look - I've done enough GUI work to know what the limitations 
can be. Still, even if the rendered look has to be reproduced programatically, 
there could be a benefit in starting to evaluate different proposals. 
A site like 99designs seems to be a pretty cheap way to get various 
ideas thrown around.

About UI fads, I have been contemplating various designs that are 
not typical, but with things like the iPhone out, it's very difficult 
to differentiate from that, in a way that makes the R3 GUI easily 
recognizable. I would like to make a GUI that one doesn't forget 
that they have seen, similar to when you saw or used OSX the first 
time. I'm fairly resourceful, when it comes to building consistent 
GUI artwork.


About animation and gestures: If this is done correctly, they can 
be added as subsystems of the GUI.

Our primary concern is that RM Asset needs to use R3 very soon for 
a production app for a customer, so the focus is to make all things 
that are normally handcranked in VID and RebGUI, such as form validation, 
handling of database records and a complete UI test framework fully 
automatic. If it takes 2 days instead of 7 to build and test a GUI, 
Robert saves money and can ship earlier.


Over the past year, with the rather big RebGUI app, NLPP, that RM 
Asset has built, we've learned exactly where we need to make things 
better and what works OK and certain delays, because of GUI architecture 
limitations have cost money. It's no longer for convenience or for 
advertizing the GUI as easy, but hard money savings are involved.

I'm not sure I follow this "It's no longer for convenience or for 
advertizing the GUI as easy" - so the current intent is to get something 
out the door as opposed to creating the easiest to use UI framework?

no, it's both things. The GUI system must be easy and quick to work 
with. That's how we build apps.

As such, what we're doing is also in your interest. :-)

and is much appreciated!

I think eye-candy is a very important aspect and, as Henrik said, 
making a GUI that is breathtaking and rememberable is a lot of work 
but worth doing it.

And we will come to it after the basic infrastructure is done and 
stablizes.

I think that if someone really wants, why not to post mock-ups? Even 
if those would not be implemented in the end? It would at least provoke 
some discussions. The design is always tricky - everyone of us has 
different taste for what looks cool, nice, or what actually looks 
ugly :-)

I know a guy who recently left Adobe to do GUI design on contract. 
 He was employed as a GUI designer and has been doing it for many 
years now.  I've suggested to him that this 'could' be a good way 
to get some recognition 'IF EVER' R3 made some ripples in the development 
world.  I didn't get a firm committment that he would do it or not, 
but I will follow up to see if he wants to make a submission of a 
mockup or two.

Get him in contact with me.

Perhaps rather discuss the GUI looks we should be considering the 
mechanism of how that look is implemented.  Is it all draw based? 
 No bitmaps at all?

you can use bitmaps inside DRAW

Robert, I've forwarded him an email using the email address here 
in AltME.

Some time ago, I seem to remember some talk of masks to be used with 
styles for pixel accurate hit detection of non rectangular shapes, 
allowing for holes in styles, etc. Is this (still?) planned? If the 
framework allows for both bitmap and vector definition of styles, 
will any accompanying mask match the implementation? i.e. anywhere 
a bitmap is used, an optional bitmap mask could be used and where 
vector elements are used, a set of bezier (or other type) of curves 
would be optionally used for masking. If a particular style uses 
both bitmap and vector elements in its definition, would some data 
structure hold both types of masks?

Yes it was discussed, as something missing...

Yes, this is still planned. Not sure how the implementation will 
look like at the moment.

ok then once we have the basic widget set i listed we need to setup 
all the keyboard shortcuts that makes life of one easier... tab navigation 
alt+ underlined key navigation for menu bar and popup menu.


Ok i'm done i return split my lumbs down my bed... GRaham yes somekind 
of nasty flu i lost 20 libs in a week...

so when you were raving before last week, you were delirious ?

... and someone please get ctrl + tab propagated to REBOL. Without 
it, there is no go for switching the tabs by keyboard shortcut. And 
- no excuses or cross-platform crap defending, please :-)

Robert - what is further "low-level" plan? I can see ( http://www.rebol.net/wiki/Host-Kit_Development_Notes
) that we will get A104, A105, which are going to be more of a merge 
releases. But do you have an idea, what will Carl work on next? Not 
that there would not be lots of work ahead :-) ( http://www.rebol.com/rebol3/index.html
) Will e.g. tasking be next?

Two notes here. Please ask Carl for two small changes/additions:


- Add Projects page directly to the right menu here: http://www.rebol.com/rebol3/index.html
- it is simply hidden and can be seen only from a Roadmap page ...

- I thought we already added tasking/IPC methods to the projects 
page. It is imo important and legitimate, and it should be briefly 
added, untill such feature is implemented - http://www.rebol.com/projects.html

What's this? :-) http://rebol.hmkdesign.dk/files/r3/gui/234.png

a discussion we had yesterday about how to produce that layout. the 
SPACING parameter would produce a space around all red squares equal 
in size to the spacing between the squares. this has been changed, 
so that space is not produced and one must use PADDING instead.

can't wait for the time, when you will release some alpha or beta 
of the GUI for us to try our first experiments :-)

it'll be a while yet. have been busy moving projects to RM Asset's 
SVN server and now am working on a build system, which is why I was 
asking for prebol for R3 in the REBOL3 group.

uh ... it almost feels like noone is really working on gui right 
now?

work is being done

graham no ... that was before the flu ... and  i ment every single 
word i said ... this community is firing to it's foot with a 44 magnum 
and doesn't realised it ...

as my futur contribution ? plain and simple their will be none  of 
it ... i shown some thing asked from years now are easy to do and 
i won't do them  to show the lack of serrious and vision of this 
community.


After having being treated the way i have been past week considere 
me as a non active member of this community.


I wish you the best realise your ambitions  even if we all know here 
that it's not possible  for you.

you lack work you lack vision you lack vision but you are greedy 
to take money from others ...  most of the bet now repose on your 
greedyness and lust for monney ... that's not a good fuel for a diying 
community and that's not a process i want to be associate with ...

in the process what is the most disgusting is that instead of turning 
this R3 GUI project a real community effort you sabotaged it you 
let it rote then you proposed your own monney based speudo solution 
that for the moment have produce nothing more than was previously 
done by carl effort after his rejection of Gabriele's work. 


After you can say to me you are in need of monney blah blah that's 
the case for many more than the "elected ones" ... you create a close 
group where the knowledge is retained and not shared. And when someone 
like me comes to get information try to discuss things alternative 
options futur he get insulted and systematically pushed aside.

I predictate your faillure in less than 4 more moth ... January 2011 
maximum the actual bounty hunters R3 group will be disbanded and 
nothing concrete will have been done apart the extraction of VID 
from R3.exe to hostkit. When you take money you do things like professionals 
that's the minimal things this means a list of what will be done. 
A roadmap with important steps and release dates  for those important 
steps before starting anywork you make that dev plan to appreciation 
to the public you debat it serriously you remove things you add things 
... You try to get involve the most possible people that have been 
already involve in R2 GUI use or creation because they have the practice 
knowledge and experience. 


Thousand way of being serrious starting a positive attractive motion 
for this part could have been done but by lack of interrest and generosity 
you end doing what you are doing ...

I predictate your faillure in less than 4 more moth ... January 2011 
maximum the actual bounty hunters R3 group will be disbanded and 
nothing concrete will have been done apart the extraction of VID 
from R3.exe to hostkit. When you take money you do things like professionals 
that's the minimal things this means a list of what will be done. 
A roadmap with important steps and release dates  for those important 
steps before starting anywork you make that dev plan to appreciation 
to the public you debat it serriously you remove things you add things 
... You try to get involve the most possible people that have been 
already involve in R2 GUI use or creation because they have the practice 
knowledge and experience. 


Thousand way of being serrious starting a positive attractive motion 
for this part could have been done but by lack of interrest and generosity 
you end doing what you are doing ...

Stop "predictating" in here. You have groups where nobody will object 
against your "predictates". This is not one of them.

Shadwolf - "as my futur contribution ? plain and simple their will 
be none  of it ..." - ok then, leave us alone, and please save us 
from your constant ranting noone is interested in, especially here 
in that group - please move that to advocacy ... ...

Is there a possibilty of having a noop in the dialect?  Sometimes 
it's convenient when dynamically constructing layouts to put something 
in just as a filler ...

ladislav i foresee what i want and this R3 gui have not better reason 
to succeed than the previous intents since it's based on the same 
main problems to it's achievement in time you will get it.

I have no reason to shut my mouth when i see things so wrong. I exposed 
what i though of this process now please don't fuel me anymore do 
as i was far and in january 2011 remember i said this was going to 
a faillure.

graham, don't know if it's useful, but I think PAD can serve as a 
filler.

pad .. what does it do the object?

PAD is a style, so it produces an object which then moves the next 
faces one grid place forward, just like any other style.

This layout:

view [panel 2 [button pad pad button]]

...produces this:

http://rebol.hmkdesign.dk/files/r3/gui/235.png

yes, that's what I meant .. it adds an unnecessary object to the 
main object