[Cuis-dev] Turning morphs back into source code

[Ezequiel Birman]

>
> Hm, do you have any examples? I don’t think you can build anything very
> useful by manipulation with the mouse without writing code… you can add
> submorphs to a morph, change colors and sizes, … not much more, I think…
> nothing like a browser or an inspector. Maybe you should checkout Fabrik,
> eToys, and other similar ideas.


As Luciano said, there's not much you can do by direct manipulation, yet.
One of the suggested ideas for helping Cuis
<https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev/wiki/Helping-Cuis>,
by Juan and Hilaire is

> Take the SVG package and turn it into and end user Vector Graphics
> designer application. Like a baby Inkscape


We currently lack the means to convert an arbitrary graphic entity, for
example a letter, into a LetterMorph composed of VectorMorphs, and/or
StrokeDrawnMorphs, back and forth; and that also opens the door to think
about morph decomposition into simpler morphs all the way down to
PixelMorphs, if necessary, and translations into other representations of
the same entity, for example into something that Dr. Geo and/or Arrows can
handle. Unlike with languages, these translations are easier coming from
one direction, and harder from the other; maybe a hint that we'd always
keep a good model when we need it, and derive from it, rather than the
other way around.

On Sun, 24 Nov 2024 at 09:55, Luciano Notarfrancesco via Cuis-dev <
cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:

> Hm, do you have any examples? I don’t think you can build anything very
> useful by manipulation with the mouse without writing code… you can add
> submorphs to a morph, change colors and sizes, … not much more, I think…
> nothing like a browser or an inspector. Maybe you should checkout Fabrik,
> eToys, and other similar ideas.
>
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2024 at 22:27 Ian Jeffries via Cuis-dev <
> cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:
>
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> I'm experimenting with turning morphs created via direct manipulation
>> back into source code and am looking for some tips.
>>
>> As an example use case: I'm making a world map and would like to put my
>> house in it. The image will be pretty simple: just three or four
>> rectangles for the house, a rectangle for the garage, and a few circles to
>> represent trees. Certainly I could just write this in code, but it seems
>> like more fun to use the direct manipulation features of Morphic to create
>> the scene (duplicate, rotate, etc), then serialize that scene to code.
>>
>> Here's the twist: I'm already familiar with Cuis-UI-Packager
>> <https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-UI/blob/a56d748ac25fadf3f1910f0666b7ea77bb3df286/tools/UI-Packager.pck.st> which
>> is very cool, but my goal here is different. I'd like the result to be
>> source code, not object files, ideally similar to what I would have written
>> by hand.
>>
>> First question: is there a term in the Smalltalk community or the
>> academic literature for this task? Specifically for turning runtime objects
>> back into idiomatic source code. (I realize this problem probably can't be
>> solved in the general case since it's such a hard one-- one of the reasons
>> I'd like to read more about it).
>>
>> Second question: there isn't already a package for this in Cuis (or even
>> in Pharo etc)? I wouldn't think so and can't find one by searching, but
>> wanted to check.
>>
>> I did find Morphic Designer
>> <https://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hirschfeld/trac/SqueakCommunityProjects/wiki/designer>
>> in Squeak, but that's a little different since you build the morphs in a
>> specialized app. I'm looking for something that you can target any
>> supported runtime morph with (though I don't care how small the set of
>> supported morphs is, any example would be helpful even if it only supported
>> one or two).
>>
>> I've got a little demo working for myself which has also given me some
>> implementation questions, but I'll save those for a later thread.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Ian Jeffries
>> --
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>>
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