Re: [Laszlo-user] new visual IDE

[David Temkin]

Rich,

Number 1 - understood and agreed
Number 2 -- where specifically is the learning curve steep? I'd like  
to improve this over time, and it would be helpful to understand what  
you see as the roadblock. (which aspects of the development process,  
language, or APIs were the most challenging when you hit them).

- D.


On Nov 16, 2007, at 10:11 AM, Rich Christiansen wrote:

By the way, I'm ecstatic to hear that you're developing a new IDE.   
I personally feel there are two things keeping Laszlo from full- 
scale adoption:

1. Poor tool support
2. Steep learning curve

Your IDE should help greatly with the first issue.  I'm not sure how  
to address the second issue.  Perhaps just improved documentation?

Anyway, if we can do anything to help (e.g. beta testing), please  
let us know. :)
-Rich

Anze Cesar wrote:

Will the IDE be open source?

I suppose it's written in Java. Do you ever plan to make Eclipse  
plugin?

On Nov 16, 2007 2:26 PM, bjdevlin <  
[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hi folks,

I'm fairly new to Laszlo, and don't like the (lack of) options for
developing OL apps.  I've looked at several tools to see how they  
can enable
the development of OL apps (XML editors such as Oxygen and  
XmlBuddy, and
IDEs such as Emacs, NetBeans, and XCode).  None of these tools  
seemed to me
to offer much assistance.  Given the choice of working with poor  
IDE support
in Laszlo or using Flex, I decided to write my own IDE.

The IDE will be cross-platform, and includes

1) a LZX source XML editor with outlining, automatic indentation and
colorization, context-sensitive element/attribute suggestions, and
pre-compilation validation warnings
2) a visual layout builder displaying the component relationships  
without
having to compile to SWF, with drag and drop layout, and a property
inspector for each component
3) an in-built web-browser to display the compiled-rendered  
application
4) VCS integration

Parts 1 and 2 are complete.  Part 3 at the moment is only a wireframe
representation of the layout, and is not editable.  No work has  
started on
part 4.

However, according to this bug-report
[http://www.openlaszlo.org/jira/browse/LPP-2300] the official OL  
DTD has
been out of date for at least 18 months (it represents Laszlo at  
version
2.1.2).  This is going to limit the usefulness of the IDE, since  
probably a
significant number of elements are going to fail validation within  
the IDE
and are not going to be found as options during code-completion.    
In fact,
since it is the DTD that drives the property palettes, if an  
element is not
listed in the DTD there will not be a property inspector for it.

I don't know if voting for OL bugs has any effect, but I know of  
other
organizations with open bug-reporting who do respond to votes on  
bugs.  If
you would like to see a new IDE for OL, please vote for the above  
bug.
Indeed, I'm not alone in needing this updated DTD: several people  
have
posted in the forum asking for an updated DTD
(http://forum.openlaszlo.org/showthread.php?p=29210#post29210 and
http://forum.openlaszlo.org/showthread.php?p=29506).

Apologies if this is the wrong forum in which to raise something  
like this.
Also, if there is already work underway on updating the DTD, then my
apologies for complaining about the currently outdated DTD.   Also,  
I sent
this message via nabble.com, and inadvertendly sent an earlier  
version.
Luckily, since I hadn't yet subscribed to the list it looks like that
message did not appear.  My apologies if it does subsequently  
appear - I
didn't mean to spam the list on this issue.

Bernard
--
View this message in context: 
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--
lp,
Anže