Alternative to WindowBuilder Pro

[Francesco Raymondi]

Hi all,

I would like to know if there is another form builder compatible to visual age smalltalk.

We use WindowBuilder Pro with WidgetKit.

Our customers say that the forms and the tableWidget are too "old style" ... 

How can we do to upgrade our forms?

Thank you very much.

Regards

[Joachim Tuchel]

Hi Francesco,

I am afraid there is nothing that can easily be integrated in VA ST. Both the Composition Editor and WindowBuilder have spent a good decade in some kind of winter's sleep. This is really sad and frustrating, especially in the light of the fact that Instantiations has had a long tradition in building excellent GUI building tools, the last of which having been WindowBuilder (GWT, SWT and Swing Designer) for Java/Eclipse.

So if you really need to build modern-looking, fancy GUIs, Smalltalk in general is not a good area for you - not only VA Smalltalk. The best thing I can think of is some level of integration with external processes that drive a GUI and keep your business code in VAST. If you use DLL-bindings or OLE or some other technology, this will always be hard work.

On the other hand, Instantiations has taken over VAST from IBM in 2005, and after a few years of very low investment, there has been a lot going on under the covers in recent years. VAST as an IDE has made huge leaps forward with much better editing, code competion, syntax highlighting and such. If you compare VAST 8.6.x to 8.0, things feel so much different.
The current focus lies in a new 64-bit VM, and before that a lot of work went into making Seaside work on VAST for web applications. I can tell you this works quite well, because we've been using Seaside on VAST in several projects.

So here is hoping that Instantiations comes back to their roots and picks up on the GUI front once the dust settles on the upcoming 64-bit VM. I personally think WindowBuilder is the best possible base for a future GUI building tool in VAST, but it is clear that even if Instantiations decides to put their priorities towards GUI building tools (which I personally think they should), we will not see anything reasonably improved before 2018. I know this sounds depressing (which I think it is), but realistic.

And then, there is this important question that every GUI builder must answer: what kind of GUI look&feel is the preferred one? What libraries to use? Look at MS Office, which has been a reference point for many years: every two years it looks completely different. As a GUI developer, you are constantly running after the current GUI-style-du-jour. Remember: VAST runs on Windows, AIX and Linux. So libraries like GTK seem to be a good fit, because there is a GTK for Windows. BUT this still is not "native Windows" and will always be a least common denominator between modern Linux GUIs and WIndows. OTOH, GTK opens new options like Mac OS.

So this whole thing is complicated and I am glad I am not in a position to make a decision here. It's clear something has to be done about VAST's GUI tools. But there is no obvious choice for a new base...

So my short answer is: WindowBuilder is currently the best thing you can get.

Joachim

[Francesco Raymondi]

Thank you Joachim for your exhaustive answer.

[Seth Berman]

Hello All,

Good answer Joachim:)

I'm with you in your appreciation of WindowBuilder technology.  Of course, this is what I got started with when I was first started using VA Smalltalk.  If I "grew up" using the Composition Editor, perhaps I would be making some sort of counter-argument right about now.

From time to time I venture off and look at the LOE of backporting SWT to our Common Graphics/Common Widgets (and by extension...hooking them into GUI building tools).  Even though SWT did away with the separation of OSWidget and CommonWidget...at first glance it always looks pretty straightforward.  Then of course, I get into it and realize I'm going to break everybody's stuff unless I design in an intricate compatibility layer.  So the problem isn't understanding how to implement the functionality...the problem is in the adaptation of it.  I faced the same issue with Scintilla in the past (and that's just one widget)...fairly easy to implement....very hard to ensure complete CW compatibility so you could just drop it in place of a CwText.
SWT also did away with Motif in favor of GTK.  I happen to agree with this...but a complete replacement to GTK in our product creates a level of compatibility headaches to rival the 64-bit vm.  I'm not saying it's something we are not up for....but as Joachim pointed out...it's not an effort we will be running in parallel with the 64-bit transition.

In more recent times, I've backed off a complete SWT backport and looked at smaller enhancements to the Windows controls that users would find useful and get value from.  So I think there is an answer to continued modernization to the L&F that doesn't involve swallowing all available resources.  Post 64-bit vm...we can revisit based on what customer demand is.

-- Seth

[Richard Sargent]

On Thursday, March 24, 2016 at 9:59:35 AM UTC-7, Seth Berman wrote:

Hello All,

Good answer Joachim:)

I'm with you in your appreciation of WindowBuilder technology.  Of course, this is what I got started with when I was first started using VA Smalltalk.  If I "grew up" using the Composition Editor, perhaps I would be making some sort of counter-argument right about now.

I grew up with it, as it were. I'm not a big fan. Although it is pretty useful. I've never used WindowBuilder.

A drag and drop layout tool is essential for productivity. As is a tool that fosters creation and use of reusable parts.

The only truly important piece of the Composition Editor is the attachment specifications (especially if one can do "offset from position", previously discussed with Seth).

[Marten Feldtmann]

I grew up with WB on VisualSmalltalk and later VA - and in those days, the tool was state of the art and I still like the tool - even today.

Then I worked with the Composition technology and actually I found there what I felt was missing with WBPro: the support for this tedious data handling in forms, dialogs and I found that pretty amazing and I liked that. Even today in the HTML-scene you will find frameworks working in that direction and there this behaviour is state of the art.

Look and Feel ? Years ago this had to be Windows like - but today this is not so clear any more. Its must be a nice, consistent look and feel. If you have money, then one might use KDE (which is a very large library) - but has an wondowful look and feel on several platforms.

Smalltalk and GUI ? Well, to be honest: its a long time ago, where I implemented a new GUI in VA.

Windows only ? Well, then have a look at Dolphin - that's a Windows tool.The latest version is free and therefore is a pretty good candidate for a nice look and feel client building tool your customer might expect today.

Multiple platforms: yes - here is no real candidate (of course VW - but that's another story). Pharo and Squeak are in terms of a GUI somewhere located ...

Therefore I switched to the HTML scene for my interfaces or lately I tried out Python with its stone-age-based-framework on TCL/Tk and was pretty amazed how simple it was to write GUIs to run under MacOS, Linux and Windows and give nice native look-and-feel.

And VA ? In a situation, where breaking the compatibility might force customer (in this small community) to leave the product, but doing nothing will not bring up new projects and customers might switch to other products for new projects and will leave the product also (over the long term).

The situation is pretty sad :-(

[Elvio Fernandez]

Hi Marten, people

Let me say something "off-topic" in this thread, but sitll related with arguments you say. There is an alternative S8 (http://u8.smalltalking.net) can run in wide range of platforms/modalities windows, linux, iOS, OSX (and will continue growing). Although S8 has not yet a production GUI builder you can benefit of still working with Smalltalk without moving out to other tools/languages.

For those of you want more information you can check U8Newsletter or U8 swiki (datailed documentation) or a Getting started Guide

Cheers

Elvio

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[Joachim Tuchel]

Hi Seth,

glad you don't ban me from the group ;-)

I grew up with the Composition Editor and back in the days when you made an IBM certification I liked the ability to write program logic visually. These days, I don't use this any more and more or less think it is not such a good idea at all. The concept of visually connected, pre-made parts was a very nice one, but didn't work out - neither business wise, nor technically.

I got in touch with WB very late in my Smalltalk career (ca. 2010) and must say I like it very much. Only thing I miss from CompEditor is the way it handles input vs. backend data and value conversions and such.This is really nice and the way you have to do that all by hand in WB pro makes it extremely easy to pack application logic into your GUI classes. That is the only bad thing I see in WB.

The mess CompEditor does with magical data about part layout and the strange things you need to do once that stuff breaks (and it does from time to time) is a big minus for the ABT layer. Code hidden in custom fields is not a good idea.

I really think the SWT Designer was a real work of art! An excellent brainchild of WB. Instantiations shoudl really pick this red thread up and work on weaving it further. There were so many great features and little helpers and tools, and to me, it also felt like home ;-)

I am pretty sure I am not the only one who is grateful for your extensive care for backwards compatibility. We've seen the effects of disruptive upgrades in our neighborhood...

I guess the 64 bit VM is almost done, so you guys need new goals, like making nice Win10 GUIs paintable in VAST ;-) And a nice Linux port of VAST including Scintilla of course...

Best