Thanks for trying BobsUI. There is no tutorial yet. I will make one and upload
it to the swiki, but right now I am very busy and will not be able to work on
BobsUI for a couple of months.
Until I write the tutorial, there are a few things you can look at if you want
to experiment. 1. If you haven't done this, download BobsUI from SqueakMap.
2. The screenshot app is called ExampleRolodex. You can open this by typing
"ExampleRolodex open" in a workspace, highlighting it, and selecting "do it"
from the workspace menu.
3. The ExampleRolodex is the most complete example I have of how most BobsUI
windows will be written. It has an application model, (ExampleRolodex),
composite models, and elements. You can start at ExampleRolodex and find how
the models interact.
4. Developing visual components in BobsUI is unlike any other tool I have ever
used, so it might be confusing for new BobsUI users. In order to develop a
BobsUI window, you do not start with a window and add components to it. You
start with components, save them, and when they are done add them to a window.
The last thing you do is save the window. With models and visual components,
you are always building from small to large in BobsUI.
5. The visual components in BobsUI are created from the bobsUI menu, which is
found on the World menu. You create a component, like a button, and drop it
onto the desktop. Then you change the settings to what you want using the
viewer button on its halo. When you are done, you push the bottom left purple
button on its halo, and save it to a repository.
6. When visual components are saved, they are written in XML format to what I
called a repository. You can browse the repositories with the repository
browser, which is located on the bobsUI menu. On the browser there are four
panes from left to right. These panes are:
- Builders The builder that you will use to build components in the
browser. - Repositories Where components are written. There are two
repositories here, one for the view used by the bobsUI tools, and one for
example windows. You can also create your own. Whichever repository is
set to default is the one you will write components in.
- Categories The type of documents to make searching easier.
- Documents These are the names of the components. Selecting these will
display their XML in the pane below.
For example, the XML document that represents the ExampleRolodex window is
located in Examples, window, rolodexExampleView.
You can open any document in the repository for editing by selecting its name
and selecting "open" on the document name pane's menu.
There are other examples in the download. Mostly they are there for my testing
purposes, but they are small enough that you can look at them and learn
something. They are much less complex than the ExampleRolodex. You can send
"open" to any of these models in a workspace. These include:
ButtonTestModel
CheckBoxTestModel
DropDownListTestModel
EnableDisableTestModel
EntryFieldTestModel
AddComponentTestModel
PanelTestModel
PanelSwapTestModel
RadioButtonTestModel
SliderTestModel
SpinButtonTestModel
TestHideUnhideModel
I hope this gives you something to look at until I can write proper
documentation.
I have two warnings. One is the next update to BobsUI will likely break any
windows you create in the current version, so don't create anything important,
because you might have to delete it. I hope to release the next version in a
few months. After that change, BobsUI will be more stable and safe to use.
The second warning is that the goal for BobsUI is to be able to write business
applications in it, but it is not close to that goal yet. If you look closely
at the code you will find bugs, bad code, and things which are only beginning
to be implemented that need a lot of work. Eventually these things will be
worked on, but today it is only about half finished.
If you have any questions, you can send an email.
- Doug