GUI

[Chris Eppstein]

I tried to get @Malarkey set up with compass and sass today. Rubygems is a pain in the ass, and the command line frightens him. A project front end for the compass utilities is needed to increase the adoption of sass and compass.

So this thread is about a GUI for compass. GO.

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

As I mentioned on twitter, I plan to work on a GUI for Sass and/or Compass post-2.4 if no one else does.

I suppose the most fundamental thing is a big list of all the files being watched for compilation, and the ability to add/remove files from it.

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Chris Eppstein <ch...@eppsteins.net> wrote:

I tried to get @Malarkey set up with compass and sass today. Rubygems is a pain in the ass, and the command line frightens him. A project front end for the compass utilities is needed to increase the adoption of sass and compass.

So this thread is about a GUI for compass. GO.

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[Derek P.]

I've toyed with this idea. We can start by bypassing the "lets use MacRuby" discussion. I tried doing that, its just a little too unstable for real development. 

Shoes is pretty much dead too. I suppose we could look at Titanium? Or we could just suck it up and break out some ObjC.

What types of technologies are people familiar with?

- Derek

On Dec 7, 2009, at 2:05 PM, Chris Eppstein wrote:

I tried to get @Malarkey set up with compass and sass today. Rubygems is a pain in the ass, and the command line frightens him. A project front end for the compass utilities is needed to increase the adoption of sass and compass.

So this thread is about a GUI for compass. GO.

[Derek P.]

We should also have an easy way to find and install compass plugins and a basic way to read the docs and upgrade the gems.

- D

[Chris Eppstein]

I saw that but we need more devs building tools than just you and me. I'd like to see some fresh meat on the dev side. We can keep you plenty busy with language enhancements.

[Charles Roper]

On Dec 7, 10:05 pm, Chris Eppstein <ch...@eppsteins.net> wrote:
> I tried to get @Malarkey set up with compass and sass today. Rubygems is a
> pain in the ass, and the command line frightens him. A project front end for
> the compass utilities is needed to increase the adoption of sass and
> compass.

OK, so I'd be interested in knowing what, exactly, was a pain in the
arse about Rubygems. I've no experience of it on the Mac, but on
Windows you just install Ruby using RubyInstaller, open a command
prompt and type gem install compass. It couldn't be easier.

For a Compass GUI, I would suggest something like InstantRails that
packages Ruby, Rubygems, Sass and Compass, and provides a means to
generate new projects, start/stop the watcher and so on.

I've also found the following extension for Firefox to be absolutely
brilliant for working with projects that use Compass/Sass. I've been
using it with Staticmatic to great effect:

http://xrefresh.binaryage.com/

It monitors the filesystem for changes, then refreshes the browser
automatically when it detects a change. It's a beautiful thing. It
would make a great companion to the Compass GUI.

Charles

[Eric Berry]

What do you need help with? I saw your tweet.

Eric Berry

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

One thing that's clear to me is that this can't be platform-specific (meaning no MacRuby, ObjC, etc). A lot of designers are on Windows, and there are even a few on Linux. Plus I can't help out if it doesn't run on Linux.

I was initially thinking that Qt would be a good place to start in terms of a toolkit, although Titanium looks very nice as well.

[Chris Eppstein]

A large amount of code refactoring was done for 0.10 specifically to enable a GUI to exist and manage several compass projects simultaneiou. I'm a web geek, and not great at desktop GUIs. So I would like to have someone good at those, take the charge to build a GUI that provides a large subset of the compass CLI as a GUI.

chris

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 2:13 PM, Eric Berry <cav...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Derek P.]

Yeah I was about to mention Titanium. How do people feel about Adobe AIR ?

- D

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

I'd much rather stick with something open-source, to bolster the ecosystem and so forth.

[Charles Roper]

On Dec 7, 10:55 pm, Nathan Weizenbaum <nex...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd much rather stick with something open-source, to bolster the ecosystem
> and so forth.

What about XUL? Plenty of examples here for inspiration.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mozilla-based.html
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner_Hall_of_Fame

(I didn't realise Komodo Edit was a XUL app)

Plus it's kind of in keeping with the whole Web Standards toolkit side
of things.

Charles

[Chris Eppstein]

I've used XUL in the past, it's got some nice things going for it, but I found it pretty buggy. Might've gotten better in the last two years tho.

chris

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

When I've played with XUL, it's always seemed very complex and heavyweight. It's one of those things where you need a dozen files in order to get "Hello, World!" up and running. Since the GUI's probably going to be pretty simple, I'd rather avoid it if possible.

[Thomas Reynolds]

This whole discussion should start with goals for the app. Then UX.
The technology used to implement the eventual app isn't what we should
be focusing on right now.

-Thomas

On Dec 7, 3:17 pm, Nathan Weizenbaum <nex...@gmail.com> wrote:
> When I've played with XUL, it's always seemed very complex and heavyweight.
> It's one of those things where you need a dozen files in order to get
> "Hello, World!" up and running. Since the GUI's probably going to be pretty
> simple, I'd rather avoid it if possible.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Chris Eppstein <ch...@eppsteins.net> wrote:
> > I've used XUL in the past, it's got some nice things going for it, but I
> > found it pretty buggy. Might've gotten better in the last two years tho.
>
> > chris
>

> > On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 3:09 PM, Charles Roper <reac...@charlesroper.co.uk>wrote:
>
> >> On Dec 7, 10:55 pm, Nathan Weizenbaum <nex...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > I'd much rather stick with something open-source, to bolster the
> >> ecosystem
> >> > and so forth.
>
> >> What about XUL? Plenty of examples here for inspiration.
>
> >>http://www.mozilla.org/projects/mozilla-based.html
> >>https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XULRunner_Hall_of_Fame
>
> >> (I didn't realise Komodo Edit was a XUL app)
>
> >> Plus it's kind of in keeping with the whole Web Standards toolkit side
> >> of things.
>
> >> Charles
>
> >> --
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>
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> > .

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

You're probably right. Here are some goals:

1) Compile Sass.
  Definitely support watching for changes.
  I'm not sure whether we need to support compiling individual files separately.
2) Never involve the terminal, including during installation.
  This probably means bundling Ruby and maybe RubyGems as well.
3) Allow use of Compass.
  Here I specifically mean use of Compass as a mixin library.
  This probably means bundling Compass along with the GUI, which is fine.
4) Allow use of Compass frameworks.
  Here I mean frameworks like Susy/FancyButtons/etc.
  This also means we have to have a way of installing these frameworks.
  Do we also want a way of discovering them?
5) Allow configuration of Sass/Compass.
  Basically, all command-line configuration options should be supported.

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[Chris Eppstein]

I was writing this list. only nathan did it better and hit send earlier. I would add a requirement for simple upgrade.

[Charles Roper]

On Dec 7, 10:05 pm, Chris Eppstein <ch...@eppsteins.net> wrote:
> I tried to get @Malarkey set up with compass and sass today. Rubygems is a
> pain in the ass, and the command line frightens him. A project front end for
> the compass utilities is needed to increase the adoption of sass and
> compass.

Not related to the Compass GUI, but equally important I reckon and
related to the theme of increasing adoption: first class syntax
highlighting for the major editors. We're already quite far along with
Textmate, but what is the status of the others? Coda? Espresso?
Dreamweaver?

Charles

[Alex Cabrera]

I've recently had to start working on a Ubuntu box while my Mac gets
fixed and am in desperate need of SASS syntax highlighting for gEdit.
If nobody has any suggestions of existing projects, I may need to do
it this afternoon to save what's left of my sanity.

Alex Cabrera
Interactive Director, Policus
http://policus.com

- Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse any typos, missing words, or any
otherwise gross and barbaric perversions of the english language.

On Dec 8, 2009, at 9:25 AM, Charles Roper <rea...@charlesroper.co.uk>
wrote:

> --
>
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[Charles Roper]

On 08/12/2009 18:51, Alex Cabrera wrote:
> I've recently had to start working on a Ubuntu box while my Mac gets
> fixed and am in desperate need of SASS syntax highlighting

You could try compiling E Text Editor and then using the Sass textmate
bundle (which you can download and install via the Bundles Manager):

http://github.com/etexteditor/e/

Might be marginally less effort than creating a gEdit theme. I've seen
screenshots of it running on Ubuntu, so it works, but I'm not sure how well.

http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2009/linux-progress

Charles

[Alex Cabrera]

Found a gedit theme that's incomplete (on my phone, can't find the
link right now), but I'll check e text editor as soon as I get home.
Thanks.

Alex Cabrera
Interactive Director, Policus
http://policus.com

- Sent from my iPhone. Please excuse any typos, missing words, or any
otherwise gross and barbaric perversions of the english language.

On Dec 9, 2009, at 4:52 AM, Charles Roper <rea...@charlesroper.co.uk>
wrote:

[Nathan Weizenbaum]

Back to the subject of goals for the GUI: Eric Meyer had a very good point in another thread that it should be a primary goal to display errors well.