[OT] Re: GUI's and the Rouge, Part III (yes, finally) 1/2

ruby-talk
1

its really just SOC on aanother level.

SOC? It can’t be System-on-a-chip… I’m going to
guess ‘separation-of-somethingorother’ from the
context…?

“bolted on to it?” you say that like its a bad thing
:wink:

Okay. From now on, I’ll say ‘enhanced’ :slight_smile:

well, certainly it depends to what you writing, but i
would guesstimate
that 90%+ of all apps could be written this way. it
not like you don’t
have some idea about the gui from the get go, but the
core functionality
does not have to be, nay should not be dependent on
that.

I completely agree that the core functionality should
not be dependant on the GUI. But since the GUI is
likely to be larger, more difficult, and much more
influenced by OS/toolkit/user considerations than the
‘core’, it’s something to develop over the whole life
of the project rather than add as an enhancement.

Also, while the GUI and the core should not depend
on each other, in a GUI-oriented app they should still
influence each other very strongly, so that a
significant change in one will have to be reflected in
the other. This means that developing them in
parallel is much more useful than developing one and
then assuming nothing will change while you develop
the other. If the project’s complete requirements and
environment are known before starting, I guess you
could do the core first and the GUI later, if it’s
possible to test the core properly with only a
skeleton GUI.

i don’t follow you references to CodeWarrior,
PageMaker, etc. as
builders of heavy duty GUIs. ?

I meant them as examples of heavy-duty GUIs. After
some thought, I guess Internet Explorer would be an
excellent example. Imagine creating the object and
event model first, and THEN starting the renderer…
not a pretty sight (in practise, they did roughly the
opposite).

can you not see the utitlity of what i’ve described?

I can see its utility if you already have an
application that is not GUI-focused, but needs to be
enhanced with a small portable GUI. I can’t see it’s
utility for a GUI focused app like a stock trading
front end or a web browser. As I said, I think the
former case is well-served already.

perhaps you simply don’t code gui apps?

Alas, when pressed to claim expertise in something,
it’s in GUIs that I have to claim it :slight_smile: Indeed, I
would say that the last two projects I were involved
with were about 60% GUI code, 20% comms/data access
code, and 20% logic (with 93% of the effort in the GUI
part). Which is why the idea of a GUI as something
you retrofit to an application strikes me as odd.
People with backgrounds in less GUI-focused
applications might react differently.

Dossy commented:

Yes. There’s a reason the Model-View-Controller
(MVC) pattern is so well-known.

Yes, I’d always use it except for really little apps.

x

2

I don’t know how I did this, since I did it some time ago, but on one
of my windows boxen I did a “ruby -v” and got:

ruby 1.7.2 (2002-06-29) [i386-mswin32]

Where did that version of ruby come from? I’d like to have it on the
rest of my machines here, but I can’t find a distribution that has
1.7.2 for windows. I’m quite certain I didn’t compile it myself.

Thanks

···

=====

Use your computer to help find a cure for cancer: http://members.ud.com/projects/cancer/

Yahoo IM: michael_s_campbell

Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better

3

Do customers (of software) pay for core functionality, or
the GUI?

If the GUI is “larger, more difficult, and much more
influenced by OS/toolkit/user considerations”, is this
necessary or is it coincidental?

I think that applications that get driven by their UI
rather than the functionality the software is supposed
to deliver are doomed to fail (at least, relative to
any competing application which isn’t UI-bound).

I do think it’s an easy trap to fall into to say that
“the UI is the closest layer to the user and therefore
the layer the user will be most critical of, so it’s
the most important layer to do well” but consider that
even today, in 2002, Microsoft Excel still looks very
reminiscent of VisiCalc, nearly 20 years earlier. The
functionality drove the design and it won.

– Dossy

···

On 2002.07.24, Benjamin Peterson bjsp123@yahoo.com wrote:

I completely agree that the core functionality should
not be dependant on the GUI. But since the GUI is
likely to be larger, more difficult, and much more
influenced by OS/toolkit/user considerations than the
‘core’, it’s something to develop over the whole life
of the project rather than add as an enhancement.

–
Dossy Shiobara mail: dossy@panoptic.com
Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/
“He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own
folly – then you can let go and quickly move on.” (p. 70)

4

I have responded to you in private, and here it is for the group:
http://www.dm4lab.to/~usa/ruby/index_en.html

You will find two version of 1.7.2 here and I think the latest one (06-29)
is made for the .NET platform.
Enjoy!
– Shanko

“Michael Campbell” michael_s_campbell@yahoo.com wrote in message
news:20020724212429.33677.qmail@web12405.mail.yahoo.com…

I don’t know how I did this, since I did it some time ago, but on one
of my windows boxen I did a “ruby -v” and got:

ruby 1.7.2 (2002-06-29) [i386-mswin32]

Where did that version of ruby come from? I’d like to have it on the
rest of my machines here, but I can’t find a distribution that has
1.7.2 for windows. I’m quite certain I didn’t compile it myself.

Thanks

=====

Use your computer to help find a cure for cancer:
http://members.ud.com/projects/cancer/

···

Yahoo IM: michael_s_campbell

Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Health - Feel better, live better
http://health.yahoo.com

5

I completely agree that the core functionality should
not be dependant on the GUI. But since the GUI is
likely to be larger, more difficult, and much more
influenced by OS/toolkit/user considerations than the
‘core’, it’s something to develop over the whole life
of the project rather than add as an enhancement.

Do customers (of software) pay for core functionality, or
the GUI?

Studies show that users prefer a good GUI with limited functionality over a
high functionality and a bad GUI.

If the GUI is “larger, more difficult, and much more
influenced by OS/toolkit/user considerations”, is this
necessary or is it coincidental?

It is necessary if you want happy users.

I think that applications that get driven by their UI
rather than the functionality the software is supposed
to deliver are doomed to fail (at least, relative to
any competing application which isn’t UI-bound).

I don’t think the two aspects can be separated. What would a word processor
look and feel like without any user interface?

I do think it’s an easy trap to fall into to say that
“the UI is the closest layer to the user and therefore
the layer the user will be most critical of, so it’s
the most important layer to do well” but consider that
even today, in 2002, Microsoft Excel still looks very
reminiscent of VisiCalc, nearly 20 years earlier. The
functionality drove the design and it won.

No, the metaphor of a manual spreadsheet drove the design of both the UI and
the functionality. Each is useless without the other, so the design of the
two must proceed in parallel.

···

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 07:15 pm, Dossy wrote:

On 2002.07.24, Benjamin Peterson bjsp123@yahoo.com wrote:

– Dossy

6

It really depends. Video games don’t have any core functionality other than
a GUI. Software for operating power plants, refineries, etc is starting to
have nice GUI’s too but the selling point is still that the plant will
operate more efficiently.

···

On 7/24/02 5:15 PM, “Dossy” dossy@panoptic.com wrote:

Do customers (of software) pay for core functionality, or
the GUI?

–
There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity
that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to
trees and plants. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

7

not really. i mean it depends on the application. certainly there are
some applications that hinge on thier very visualization. but even so
the conceptual model will stand on its own. for instance i could design
a spreadsheet like engine without being certain how it will be
visualized. i may have the notion that it will lay out like a grid, but
it’s possible that i may, after already completing the backend, decide
that the ‘cells’ need not be in a grid after all, and rather can be
freely placed anywhere on a page. (in fact i’ve been waiting for this
–the eventual merging of spreadsheet and word proccessor. :wink:

if you develop your application too closly in relation to its interface,
you will find yourself back-peddling should you later realize the
interface should work another way.

~transami

~transami

···

On Wed, 2002-07-24 at 21:07, Albert Wagner wrote:

No, the metaphor of a manual spreadsheet drove the design of both the UI and
the functionality. Each is useless without the other, so the design of the
two must proceed in parallel.

8

Games these days come with a decent amount of non-graphics coding - AI, Game
logic, Inventory systems, Mission/Objective systems, Networking code etc etc
etc

The rendering system and the way it is used to depict a user interface is
equivilent to other GUI’s I suppose.

···

–
Justin Johnson.

“Chris Gehlker” gehlker@fastq.com wrote in message
news:B96598C1.1E223%gehlker@fastq.com…

On 7/24/02 5:15 PM, “Dossy” dossy@panoptic.com wrote:

Do customers (of software) pay for core functionality, or
the GUI?

It really depends. Video games don’t have any core functionality other
than
a GUI. Software for operating power plants, refineries, etc is starting to
have nice GUI’s too but the selling point is still that the plant will
operate more efficiently.

There is, nevertheless, a certain respect and a general duty of humanity
that ties us, not only to beasts that have life and sense, but even to
trees and plants. -Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

9

No, the metaphor of a manual spreadsheet drove the design of both the UI
and the functionality. Each is useless without the other, so the design
of the two must proceed in parallel.

not really. i mean it depends on the application. certainly there are
some applications that hinge on thier very visualization. but even so
the conceptual model will stand on its own. for instance i could design
a spreadsheet like engine without being certain how it will be
visualized. i may have the notion that it will lay out like a grid, but
it’s possible that i may, after already completing the backend, decide
that the ‘cells’ need not be in a grid after all, and rather can be
freely placed anywhere on a page. (in fact i’ve been waiting for this
–the eventual merging of spreadsheet and word proccessor. :wink:

if you develop your application too closly in relation to its interface,
you will find yourself back-peddling should you later realize the
interface should work another way.

The functionality of a spreadsheet had been around for years embedded in
various business applications that were tedious and unexciting to their
users. It was the visual metaphor of a spreadsheet that made it a killer app
and the saviour of Apple. Please don’t make the mistake of underestimating
the importance of a UI to public acceptance of a product. The world is
littered with applicances that failed simply because they ignored some basic
rules about how people perceive. Read: “The Design of Everyday Things” by
Donald A. Norman.

···

On Wednesday 24 July 2002 10:37 pm, Tom Sawyer wrote:

On Wed, 2002-07-24 at 21:07, Albert Wagner wrote:

~transami

~transami

10

Games these days come with a decent amount of non-graphics coding - AI, Game
logic, Inventory systems, Mission/Objective systems, Networking code etc etc
etc

I guess it all depends on how one interprets “video” and “core
functionality”. To me video game implies something like a shooter or Tetris.
I have a nice 3D graphic shell for GNUChess but I don’t consider it a
“video” game.

And I agree that video games have a lot of functionality in addition to to
their “core” functionality but the UI is still the primary attraction. A
text version of Unreal wouldn’t be the same even if it had the same
networking model.

···

On 7/25/02 12:49 PM, “Justin Johnson” justinj@mobiusent.com wrote:

“Chris Gehlker” gehlker@fastq.com wrote in message
news:B96598C1.1E223%gehlker@fastq.com…

On 7/24/02 5:15 PM, “Dossy” dossy@panoptic.com wrote:

Do customers (of software) pay for core functionality, or
the GUI?

It really depends. Video games don’t have any core functionality other
than
a GUI.
–

Conversation, n. A fair for the display of the minor mental commodities,
each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to
observe those of his neighbor. -Ambrose Bierce