Developement-level discussion of Volity, a network protocol and programming framework for Internet game-playing.

ES SVG lib? (was Re: Eights SVG)

Is it time to start thinking about a standard set of scripts to
provide to Volity UI writers? I'm thinking of basic things like
generating combo boxes, draggable things and drag targets, simple
sprites (on the level of "here are the shapes in your walk animation,
flip through them when i tell you 'walk' and stop when i tell you
'stop'"), grids (automagically spec out either a chessboard-like thing
or an RPG inventory-like thing, or a grid layout for something else
entirely)...

A casual cruise through google world has surprisingly not revealed any
ECMAScript libraries for simple UI widgets, although it seems like
such an obvious project that I could be wrong. Plenty for generating
SVG from Java and such, but nothing in pure ES. Such a library seems
both useful for Volity and likely to catch on with other projects as
well.

I don't have a completely firm grasp on SVG yet, but I do know the
DOM, and I feel up to this if I can get time. Are there any
Volity-specific needs that I'm overlooking?

On Sat, 18 Dec 2004 13:13:56 -0500, Jason McIntosh <jmac <at> jmac.org> wrote:
> I have published a new SVG UI for Crazy Eights, intended to serve as a
> model for more sophisticated UI files. Not optimally pretty, but it
> does the job. At the moment, it's primarily lacking card-play
> animation, so cards blink into place when played, instead of sliding
> smoothly into the discard pile; I have yet to get the hang of
> script-based animation.
> 
> The file does, however, manage to demonstrate simple user feedback,
> such as the onmouseover actions attached to the cards in hand, the use

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Jason McIntosh | 7 Jan 02:45

Re: ES SVG lib? (was Re: Eights SVG)

On Dec 30, 2004, at 8:26 PM, Mike Sugarbaker wrote:

> Is it time to start thinking about a standard set of scripts to
> provide to Volity UI writers? I'm thinking of basic things like
> generating combo boxes, draggable things and drag targets, simple
> sprites (on the level of "here are the shapes in your walk animation,
> flip through them when i tell you 'walk' and stop when i tell you
> 'stop'"), grids (automagically spec out either a chessboard-like thing
> or an RPG inventory-like thing, or a grid layout for something else
> entirely)...

My focus on finishing the core protocol, and cheering on the Javolin 
hackers as they push its first releases out the door, has prevented me 
from spending a lot of time thinking about how UIs are actually made, 
even though they're actually at least as important to actual gameplay 
as all the other stuff. (I made an exception to finish the Eights SVG 
so that Javolin would have multiple working examples, at least one of 
which was less lame than rock-paper-scissors.)

I have assumed (or, rather, dreamed) from the start that "someday" 
there would exist a whole application suite just for creating UI files 
and shared UI-component libraries. The first steps towards this ideal 
are little reusable patterns just of the sort you describe above.

> A casual cruise through google world has surprisingly not revealed any
> ECMAScript libraries for simple UI widgets, although it seems like
> such an obvious project that I could be wrong. Plenty for generating
> SVG from Java and such, but nothing in pure ES. Such a library seems
> both useful for Volity and likely to catch on with other projects as
> well.

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