[Edu-sig] FYI: PataPata postmortem link

[Dethe Elza]

On 30-Nov-06, at 4:50 PM, David Boddie wrote:

> On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:20:51 -0800, Dethe Elza wrote:
>
>> Oberon, Self, and Hypercard allowed you to get "behind" the widgets
>> to see the code they would invoke, and the code that created them.
>> HTML and the current desktop-widget tools do this too.  It requires
>> some additional work on the UI framework to support this, but a UI
>> that was built from Python or XML should be able to support it.
>
> Depending on what you mean by "the code they would invoke", I think
> that may be a bit too much detail for some people. A high-level view
> would be interesting, though.

What I mean by that, is that if you examine a button or menu, you  
would see the code it will call, much like the "onclick" handler in  
HTML.  That might only be the name of a function, in which case it  
would be useful to be able to examine *that* and get to the actual  
function.  For all that to work, you'd need some kind of Hypertext  
system.  If only there was one of those in common use that we could  
build on...

The other alternative if you view source on a button would be to get  
to the code for the button itself, whether that may be Button 
(title="Do Something", action="foo(this)", color="green") or <button  
action="foo(this)" style="background-color:green">Do Something</ 
button>, or whatever it looks like in your toolkit.  So in one case,  
we view source on a particular component, in the other we just  
examine the component's action or behaviour. Both can be useful.

>> Interestingly enough, Stackless Python can do this now.  You can
>> create "tasklets" which are lightweight processes that can be
>> serialized, sent over a network, restarted, and communicate with each
>> other.
>
> Yes, that's interesting to know. I had something like that in mind,  
> but I
> don't have any experience of Stackless Python.

I'm still learning it myself, but it looks quite interesting.  I'm  
trying to come up with a project complex enough to be interesting  
while still being reasonable enough to work on in my sorely-lacking  
free time.

>> [rest of dicussion snipped.  Interesting, but I don't have anything
>> to add]
>
> And I don't really have time to contribute to such a deep discussion,
> no matter how interesting it is. :-(

Oh, I know *that* feeling.  Glad you found time to contribute to the  
discussion.

--Dethe


I can't watch television without praying for nuclear holocaust.  -- 
Bill Hicks