On Jan 11, 2:18 pm, Alex Clemesha <cleme...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Over this weekend, I was thinking over some simpler ideas, such as just > > packaging up sage into a single .app, and with a script that starts the web > > server, and a WebKit view embedded in a Cocoa app does the drawing. But > > then I started reading some more about the new capabilities of HTML 5 and > > was pretty blown away. Take a look at some HTML canvas demos ( You'll need > > a very recent WebKit or Firefox 3.6) > >http://www.canvasdemos.com/ > > > Bear in mind that these demos are pure HTML and Javascript. Imagine what > > would be possible > > if Python combined with Sage were used instead of Javascript. > > All dynamic html5 (canvas, etc) demos are Javascript powered, most > time with (very) large amounts of Javascript. > For example, look at the source of:http://www.lionel.me/blocstaken > fromhttp://www.canvasdemos.com, > there is quite a lot of Javascript involved. > > Embrace the Javascript, don't fight it :-). It's the state of the art > these days, and my personal opinion is > that the Sage notebook is best improved as a 'desktop app' by just > controlling the web browser better, > not trying to re-write anything.
I think this is true for many folks and the capabilities of html5 are very impressive. However, for an (admittedly diminishing) class of applications, native is necessary. In my case, graphics use OpenGL for 2D and 3D. The X process itself is too slow for the dynamics and 3D isn't really an option for all but the simplest renderings. Most folks don't need the kind of performance I need nor do many (any?) sage notebook folks require integration with other live systems... this latter point relates to the asynchronous discussion above which is orthogonal to UI issues. Broadly speaking, however, I do agree that effort on html5 and its canvas will yield more utility for the vast majority of Sage users. Folks like myself usually need to get into the guts anyways. > > One of the problems I have with QT is that it is more of an operating > > system than a toolkit. I've dug into the QT source, and basically what it > > does is handle all of its own windowing and events, draw everything to a > > pixmap, and then eventually blt this to the screen. Thats why QT apps never > > look quite right on Mac or Windows, they have what is called an 'uncanny > > valley' effect, in that they look similar to native apps, but are just off, > > yielding a sort of creepy feel. Now QT looks fine on Linux, because QT > > **IS** the native toolkit (at least with KDE). So, the pixmap blit part isn't entirely true and certainly isn't true for the QGraphicsFramework which exploits native OpenGL heavily. Not sure about the look and feel but things appear ok on GTK... of course, I wouldn't really notice as my UI's tend to be pretty simple. Still, I think this is kinda irrelevant and the html5 approach should be banged on heavily to see just how far it will go... I think pretty far indeed. -glenn
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