[lively-kernel] Purpose of Lively

[Steve Wart]

I spent a bit of time with pencil and paper this weekend mocking up
some ideas (didn't get far), not for "Lively", but something that
started as an application of Lively, but then it morphed into a
generic domain modelling UI. Which is something I lose myself in
sometimes. Other people watch vampire movies. ymmv :)

I also pointed my son at the tutorial site, but he got stuck on the
WebDAV instructions to create a workspace for himself. I hit the same
thing; I guess I should have come up with a slightly more
comprehensive introduction for him. It might be good to post
instructions for setting up a WebDAV server for people who want to
play without relying on a central resource.

Then yesterday I must have been bored at work so I had a fairly close
look at Google's Web Toolkit (aka GWT). If you're not familiar with
it, it's a fairly impressive open-source system that compiles Java
into Javascript, at the same time exposing a fairly comprehensive
widget library. Now I haven't had a lot of success with Java in my
life, but I was impressed at what someone can do if they have a
significant amount of committed resources to building a development
environment. GTK/Eclipse/Windows wasn't particularly fun to work with,
but I guess it would be good for business applications.

So I guess I'm asking in a roundabout way about support and funding
and where is Lively going. Maybe there's no clear answer to that right
now. That may be okay, because it's all out there for anyone to build
on. But as well as thinking about Lively as an application of web
technology it might also make sense to think of different ways Lively
can be applied to scratch various itches that people have.

I thought the tutorial was a great start (except for the part where I
couldn't save a workspace - that kind of stopped me). It might just be
simple things like taking the e-mail postings that Robert pointed me
at and putting them together in a nicely formatted web page. Or
hosting them in Lively itself. I think it's probably just as easy to
create morphs for your mockup as it is to use the Google drawing code,
as long as you don't get carried away. Is there an "undo"?

Cheers
Steve

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 5:33 PM, Philip Weaver <philmaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> This topic from Steve deserves more discussion. Please discuss.
>
> Philip
>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Steve Wart <steve at wart.ca> wrote:
>>
>>
>> One thing that Apple insists on when defining the user experience for a
>> new application is to come up with a clear statement of purpose. Not only
>> what it is its intended user base (casual, professional, etc.), but also
>> what it is explicitly not intended for. What *can't* Lively do?.
>>
>> I've seen a couple of posts from Dan on his vision for Lively, but I still
>> wonder, is it an educational environment, or is it something people can use
>> to build commercial quality client-server applications?
>>
>> Smalltalk evolved in rather unexpected ways I think. I don't think I'm
>> looking for Lively on Rails, but I am interested in applications that appeal
>> to mainstream development needs.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>
> On Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 11:51 PM, Philip Weaver <philmaker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> On Wed, Jun 23, 2010 at 1:33 PM, Steve Wart <steve at wart.ca> wrote:
>>
>> Yes I noticed that you've done a huge amount of work. I asked about the
>> IDE because that is how I conceptualize the object model. Once I understand
>> that hopefully all the rest of it will come together for me.
>>
>> One thing that Apple insists on when defining the user experience for a
>> new application is to come up with a clear statement of purpose. Not only
>> what it is its intended user base (casual, professional, etc.), but also
>> what it is explicitly not intended for. What *can't* Lively do?.
>
> I'd also consider the role of a user. Is the user primarily a consumer of
> content or a producer of content? Lively allows both at the same time.
> Sadly, most people in the world today are primarily consumers and not
> programmers. I don't have a final answer here but read on further below.
> Intended user base is indeed worthy of discussion.
>
>>
>> I've seen a couple of posts from Dan on his vision for Lively, but I still
>> wonder, is it an educational environment, or is it something people can use
>> to build commercial quality client-server applications?
>
> I have interest in pursuing both of these but lean toward the latter,
> commercial development: I want to focus on whatever goals will help sustain
> and provide funding for this project. I wish and hope that Lively will
> become a disruptive technology to transform web development and web
> graphics creation. 1. Browser brings the history and bookmarks. 2. The
> toolkit brings it's own rendering and layout: whether it be the Lively
> Kernel or other. Web standards? Just say no. Use a canvas instead and your
> own toolkit. Also relating to graphics development: just say no to splicing
> raster images for web display: render them in Lively.
> So for intended user base maybe: 1. professional "web" developers but
> retrain them, 2. education
> Some of the early Lively collateral discusses making web programming simpler
> without HTML, CSS, DOM, etc. The problem has been that Lively has not had
> enough layout support to realistically compete or replace HTML and DOM.
> Philip
>