This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by James Robertson.
Original Post: Pollock and WithStyle, or Pollock WithStyle
Feed Title: Michael Lucas-Smith
Feed URL: http://www.michaellucassmith.com/site.atom
Feed Description: Smalltalk and my misinterpretations of life
For those of you interested in Pollock, as I am, you may want to read up on where Pollock is at and will be. For my 2c worth, I'd like to introduce a new idea about WithStyle to those interested in WithStyle
Over the last few weeks I've been investigating Pollock quite deeply, to understand its relationship to WithStyle. I think I've come up with an analogy that should put to rest these behind the back comments that 'WithStyle is in competition with Pollock'.
First of all. It's not. Here's why: Consider the Mozilla project. It has its own emulated widgets and it also has 'Gecko', a HTML rendering engine. For me, the emulated widgets are Pollock and 'Gecko' is WithStyle (except WithStyle renders XML, not specifically HTML).
Second of all, I've just managed to make WithStyle work -as- Pollock widgets.
Okay, so on to what this all means.
Esssentially it means those who wish to pick up Pollock sooner rather than later can do so by building applications the XML way. Make yourself an XHTML page and it can be your GUI inside VisualWorks - go further and make your own XML vocab, or use the WithStyle and Pollock vocab's, and make yourself a smart UI.
I offer this as an 'easy entry in to Pollock', as it won't be until Pollock Production 3 that we'll see the end of Wrappers once and for all.
The next Technology Preview of WithStyle will not be a fully Pollockised version of WithStyle. It will contain elements that require Pollock. But given that immediate requirement of using WithStyle inside Wrappers, it will not be until Tech Preview 3 and enough of Pollock Production 1 that WithStyle will fully switch over to Pollock technology.
As it is at the moment, if a piece of protocol conflicts between Wrapper and Pollock, Wrapper will continue to win out in the support for a little while longer. But, it is our goal to be 100% Pollock based in the -near- future.
If any body is looking for a vote of confidence towards 'That Pollock Thing', then I'm putting mine forward now. Pollock is a vastly superior framework to the old Wrappers. How that translates in to code is only just starting to be realised.
If all things go well, then WithStyle my be the first large scale Rendering engine to be put in to Pollock :)
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