On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 4:52 PM, David Curry <
curr...@mchsi.com> wrote:
> And why didn't anyone else post a whine/gripe/condolence??? It's been
> almost 4 hours, for gork's sake, a frelling eternity!
After being active with FOSS projects over the last decade, I've seen
tonnes of projects come and go. Hell, I've got projects that've
barely been touched in years; they're suspended but I've not forgotten
and still pick away at them periodically. I for one won't complain -
I appreciate the work that IBM's put into the project and respect
their decision to step away from it.
In some ways I find the announcement disappointing (it was rather
sudden) but in other ways I find it promising - I'd welcome a rewrite
for example.
My own career in web development started because I wanted to build
something similar in nature to Maqetta. Without getting into the long
of it, my most recent attempt (proof-of-concept only) came as a result
of trying to show the difference between Maqetta and a custom built
alternative. Where Maqetta is roughly 100M to download, my prototype
is 21K (in its SPA form)*. Obviously, Maqetta is far more capable and
applicable in many more situations. But it's also incredibly complex;
I've been hacking away at it for almost a year and still have only a
limited understanding.
I do hope to see development continue, but it's still a useful project
regardless.
Best,
- Scott.
* <
https://github.com/psema4/Atomic-VE>
Live SPA demo [use Chromium & devtools] <
http://psema4.github.io/Atomic-VE/>
Some metrics & thoughts re: comparison to Maqetta; these are provided
simply for reference and to back my claim of interest regarding a
Maqetta re-write. I do not - in any way - recommend this as a
replacement to Maqetta! (Please also note that metrics will be
slightly off-actual due to minor updates after these notes were
taken.)
Stats:
• index.html - 1.6K, 46L
• app.css - 3.5K, 188L
• app.js /min - 42K/16K, 781L
• total: 47.1K/21.1K, 1015 Lines
• Total time to produce: ~40h
Pros:
• Zero dependencies, no external libraries of any kind are required
• Extremely lightweight; complete application (html+js+css) is 21K
(with JS minified)
o For comparison this POC is 11K smaller than the current minified
jQuery distribution (v1.8.2 @ 32K) and almost 5000 times smaller than
the current Maqetta release (v7.0.1 @ 99.6M)
• Easy to add new widgets and widget-specific attributes
• Basic inline editors for primary attributes
• No iframes
• Preview functionality
• Total line count of all files (1015 lines) includes blank
(whitespace) lines as well as comments
• Atomic capability (single document SPA [Single Page Application], no
external files whatsoever)
• Does not require a server
Cons:
• Features not implemented:
o drag-select multiple widgets
o snap-to-grid, snap-to-widget
o re-parenting widgets
o widget resize handles
o attribute-specific input widgets in Attributes window
o pass widget & attribute names to inline editors (eg editor for
img widget edits src property)
o selection indicator in inline editors (for radio/checkboxes, like maqetta)
o inline editor for complex list-based widgets is incomplete
(radio- and check-groups)
• Shortcuts taken:
o repurposed widget drag-and-drop for dialog positioning (window
selection can sometimes cause the window to reposition)
o menus are simple select elements
o two methods for widget identification (“hints”) - one for basic
html widgets (inferred from tagName) and another for complex widgets.
All widgets should use the second method (where widget and property
hints are stored as data-* attributes in DOM nodes)
o No cross-browser support, this POC has only been tested in Chrome
--
Scott Elcomb
@psema4 on Twitter / Identi.ca / Github & more
Atomic OS: Self Contained Microsystems
http://code.google.com/p/atomos/
Member of the Pirate Party of Canada
http://www.pirateparty.ca/