Graphical connectors

[Gian Luca Scoccia]

Hi Martin,
I'm a student at the University of L'Aquila and I would be really interested in using Concrete in a work I'm doing for my thesis. Basically, what we would like to do is define a simple DSL and have end-users model what they need with a web-based editor. Concrete seems perfect for this job, but having  graphical connectors is a necessity as end-users have no knowledge of modelling  languages whatsoever. I read in your blog that you have already implemented graphical connectors, could you publish this feature? If it still needs improvements I'm willing to help and develop further features.

[Meinte Boersma]

Hi Gian Luca,

On Thursday, October 3, 2013 5:35:46 PM UTC+2, Gian Luca Scoccia wrote:

I'm a student at the University of L'Aquila and I would be really interested in using Concrete in a work I'm doing for my thesis. Basically, what we would like to do is define a simple DSL and have end-users model what they need with a web-based editor. Concrete seems perfect for this job, but having  graphical connectors is a necessity as end-users have no knowledge of modelling  languages whatsoever. I read in your blog that you have already implemented graphical connectors, could you publish this feature? If it still needs improvements I'm willing to help and develop further features.

The 'graphics-experimental' branch has the graphical connectors: https://github.com/mthiede/concrete/tree/graphics_experimental

You can also have a look at my fork (https://github.com/dslmeinte/concrete) and check for the differences, since my fork might be a little bit ahead in some aspects. (Currently, I haven't got any time for a proper pull request though.)

For a working example, check: http://www.mas-wb.com/, the Piping & Instrumentation language (3rd).

[Gian Luca Scoccia]

Thanks a lot for your reply. I have been toying around with concrete and I have  a couple of questions:
1) After loading a model and making some changes, how do I save it? I imagine that saving a model is equal to converting the DOM elements that make up my model back into JSON, but do I have to write such function myself?

2) I have been reading what I could from the Mas website and it also seems useful for what I would like to achieve for my thesis. Can I have more information about it?

Thanks in advance.

[mthiede]

Hello Gian Luca,

saving a model means converting it to JSON and somehow storing that JSON somewhere, e..g on the server.
There is a built-in function which gives you the JSON:
It's actually getModel() on the editor object, it gives you pretty printed JSON.

One of the biggest next steps with Concrete right now is to port it to JQuery (or to something compatible with JQuery).
This is because most apps use JQuery today and Prototype is not compatible, at least as long as you don't do certain special steps...

Unfortunately, I currently don't have a lot of time which I can invest into Concrete in order to do this.
If you would like to help with this though, I would try to support you as good as I can.

On the other hand, you might want to take a look at Mas which is Meinte's work...


Martin

[mthiede]

One more thing:
There is a wiki page on github describing the open topics for Concrete:
https://github.com/mthiede/concrete/wiki/Feature-Brainstorming

So porting to JQuery is maybe not the most important thing to do but it's probably the next step because any further work could then continue on the new platform.

Am Donnerstag, 3. Oktober 2013 17:35:46 UTC+2 schrieb Gian Luca Scoccia:

[Gian Luca Scoccia]

Thanks for your reply. 
I do have some skills with javascript, but I doubt that they are advanced enough to carry on the porting from Prototype to JQuery.
I'm interested in Mas, where can I get more informations about it? 
Thanks again

[Meinte Boersma]

On Monday, October 7, 2013 5:53:22 PM UTC+2, Gian Luca Scoccia wrote:

I do have some skills with javascript, but I doubt that they are advanced enough to carry on the porting from Prototype to JQuery.

 

For the most part, it should be more a matter of replacing occurrences of $() and $$() with slightly different occurrences of $() and possibly _. That last thing is the Underscore.js library, which I'm quite fond of. Prototype.js sort-of is an earlier version of jQuery and Underscore combined, so it does both DOM and collections manipulation while jQuery does mostly DOM and Underscore only collections. (OK, jQuery can also do collections but somehow that feels clumsy or wrong to me.)

Unfortunately, there's not directly a way to do the conversion gradually, but you could start with doing an inventory of the Prototype.js functionality/syntax that's actually used.