[cells-devel] A shocking proposal

[Kenny Tilton]

Nikodemus Siivola wrote:

>On Mon, Nov 10, 2003 at 10:36:57AM -0500, Kenny Tilton wrote:
>
>  
>
>>What if I base the Cells tutorials on the free LW downloads? If I can 
>>believe what I hear, it is portable across Mac OS X, Linux, and some 
>>other system called Window or something. :)
>>    
>>
>
>Maybe, but I'm not sure what the benefit would be.
>
More fun? Graphical output which would be much more recognizable. 
Handling mouse and keydown input. Have you looked at the text-based 
examples? I guess they can serve for simple ideas (maybe I am onto 
something here), but then it is completely distanced from a real-world 
use.   Hmmm, that would be a challenge. A text-only, real-world example 
on which to base a tutorial.

OK, I'll give it a go. I agree, it would be weird having the tutorial 
for something as fundamental as Cells tied up with LW having a free 
distro. (Hence the "shocking" in the proposal.)

>>That will be a lot more fun than text-based tutorials like 
>>01-cell-basics.lisp. 
>>    
>>
>
>By this I guess that you mean to do GUI-stuff as part of the tutorial,
>possibily CAPI? 
>
>IF so, I really think that that's a bad idea: I'd prefer to tackle one
>new thing at a time.
>
Trust me, you would /not/ be learning CAPI. I would, but only to a small 
degree. Even when I use an implementation-specific framework, I just use 
it to get a window, an event stream, and a bitmap to draw on. And that 
layer would just be provided for the tutorials, as in "First, load 
window-manager.lisp". Then it is all Cells all the time, using little 
more than the drawing primitives of CAPI (box, line, text).

> If you had something different in mind, then
>dunno -- but the same applies: non-standard stuff besides the main
>subject of in a tutorial is a Bad Thing.
>
>What I'd really like would be CLHS style docs for DEFMODEL, CV, C?,
>and friends...
>
That would be in the reference section, yes, agreed.

Do me a favor, let me know everyone what you think of the text-based 
tutorials on Bill's blog and in my own 01-cell-basics.lisp (and there is 
more if you want to look at the regression tests in the cells-test 
subdirectory or go to my web site and grab some old, obsolete PDFs).

One answer might be to clean up something like the boiler example 
(fairly realistic, that) which already covers all the basics. Then do up 
a similar level of reference material for those who just want to dive in 
and have some place to see all the options. Then start on an advanced 
tutorial in which I wed Cells to Lispworks CAPI. This will be very 
useful for those who want to use Cells with GTk or McClim or something 
else--I have done this exercise first with MCL's OS9 Quickdraw-wrappers, 
then with ACL Common Graphics, then with the Freeglut WIndow manager. 
Even if one is /not/ doing a GUI, the complexity of this will be enough 
to see how Cells scale to big problems, and given the LW ubiquity, it 
would not really be an obstacle to anyone that I am using a proprietary 
tool (in freebie form).

One unspoken issue here is that, if I base the more elaborate examples 
on Cello, well, Cello is so far just win32 ACL and LW, tho it is in 
principle portable to Linux and Mac OS X. A small voice tells me I will 
have to do all the porting myself, and even then I would only do OS X to 
get ready for my next entrepreneuial effort. Unless someone or ones step 
up to port Cello to Linux (unlikely) suddenly the more advanced 
tutorials are win32/OSX-only. (And I do think a GUI is necessary, tho I 
know the Linux crowd feels differently.)

Well, I see a compromise: cleaned up text-based tutorials that cover the 
basics, along with commensurate amount of indexed reference-style doc, 
followed by an advanced tutorial: "Integrating Cells with an Existing 
GUI Framework".

How's that?

kenny

ps. And please do let me know what you think about the existing intros.

k

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