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Comment by lispm | Hacker News Reader

It still has a strange non-native user interface. Why would I want another window system in a window in 2015?

So does iTunes on windows and Qt (since v. 4) on everything.

But I agree the single-window MDI is a major drawback. I keep checking out Pharo periodically and hoping a UI with multiple, native windows will be present or at least in the works, but sadly that is not yet the case.

There was actually a project many years ago for Squeak to give it native OS windows called Cheese, and the Squeak people, if you can believe this, actually told the author (Boris Shingarov) not to bother, and that if he wanted native windows, he should go use some other Smalltalk instead. They actually preferred their ugly, unprofessional, cartoonish UI that nearly everyone new to Squeak complained about.

I think Pharo is on the right track, but it's sad the developers have to spend so much time paying off the technical debt the Squeak project ran up.

With the new OSWindows you can create multiple native windows. But... this is cool to allow people to do their stuff, but it does not match very well with the development philosophy of Pharo, where we open many windows at the same time. Imagine 20+ browsers, inspectors, playgrounds opened, all mixed with your regular browsers, mail, any kind of applications and you will understand why we prefer to keep the MDI. Said that... we actually want to support SDI also for development (optional for users), but this is a lot of work and will take a lot of effort. But we'll arrive there, with time (and help).

Multiple (native) windows + tabbed browsing is IMO better than a single-window MDI. Remember Linux and other Unix desktops already support multiple virtual desktops to manage many windows; you shouldn't try to reinvent this in Pharo.

If a window manager does not support dealing with multitudes of applications with multiple windows, then the window manager does something wrong.

> Imagine 20+ browsers, inspectors, playgrounds opened, all mixed with your regular browsers, mail, any kind of applications and you will understand why we prefer to keep the MDI.

I simply hide these other applications - actually I use auto-hiding after some time period. No need for an MDI.

Let's look. My Mac now has 11 apps open: mail, calendar, contacts, browser, previewer, notes, two Lisp systems, several terminals, a finder, twitter, ...

Both Lisp systems use native windows, menus, buttons, dialogs, text fields, ... each Lisp editor is a separate window, ...

We should not forget Pharo IS a fork of Squeak, it goes to a very different direction but is based on the same code. GUI wise Pharo inherited its GUI API, Morphic from Squeak. My personal opinions is that native look interfaces are dead. Nowdays most apps use custom look especially web applications.

Native looks apps look boring. Users don't like boring applications. At least I dont :)

The GUI in Pharo is not ideal but we should not also forget that this is a small community that is able to come up with tons of new cool useful features in each release because of how R.A.D Pharo is.

I disagree, native looking applications, while "boring", at least feel natural. Every time I use an application with custom controls (which almost always look pillowy) I feel like it wasn't made by a professional, it tends to respond different and it just doesn't feel right. I have read again and again criticism against Java and how it "failed" in the desktop because every time you used a Java application, it looked like a Java application.

I am not going to debate your personal taste, its your right to want "native looking" interfaces.

There has been a project to bring native interfaces to pharo called Mars

https://marsonpharo.wordpress.com/

but after the student left none took the project further. So yes its possible but for now there zero interest for it in pharo community.

I myself also would prefer native windows, and I time to time continue working on Mars... but is a side project nobody has actually expressed interest, so I usually spend my time in other, more required, stuff. But... Mars was loading in Pharo 4.0, and even if very incomplete, is usable for them who want to give it a try and finish it (also people showing interest could help me to get motivation :) )

Right, a lot of Smalltalker would love native windows. It's a requirement for some companies as well.

Edit: not only for the look but also for the feel. I hate when my usual keyboard shortcuts do something different in Pharo than in my OS.

SmallTalk was designed to BE the computer. Skinning for a native look the way Qt does may be the way to go. Targeting code for native applications should really be a separate thing and should involve additional toolkits.

The commercial Smalltalks do this but they are very pricey.

> SmallTalk was designed to BE the computer

Yes! This is why comparing Smalltalk to programming languages misses the whole point. I just wrote a blog post about this: "Programmers: You Probably Don’t Know What a Computer Is" http://seandenigris.com/blog/?p=1092

My main complaint is the MDI. I don't think non-native widgets are a problem as long as they're done well and behave close enough to native widgets as to not confuse people.

Qt is probably the best example of this, so much that people will actually cite it as an example of a native UI toolkit when in fact it isn't, it just skins its widgets to look like it.

I find the Pharo UI boring. Looks like ancient with its old windows and controls of some dead Microsoft era. emulated other interfaces of Pharo always have this slightly off feeling to it... Just from the look&feel - not even thinking about all this non-standard half-baked UI, which is a strange mix of Xerox/Smalltalk, Morphic, Windows, and other UIs...

You would want it because its implemented in Pharo and because Pharo allow you to easily hack the system that means you can make the interface look any way you want without having to mess with C libraries. Also being Pharo it is part of the live system and it also push pharo development towards visual coding. As someone else pointed out already Pharo is a virtual OS, so having its own GUI API part of its very powerful live enviroment is very crucial. You can use external GUI APIs but you lose the ability to live code them which is what is the main goal of Pharo anyway. Personally I love the look of the user interface and even though there is dated MacOS theme I prefer using this theme. But one can create any theme he wants if looks are that important to him.

It's beyond my understanding why non-native windows, buttons, menus, etc. are a requirement for 'live-coding' or 'visual coding'.

its not, but on the other hand, existing GUI APIs are not live coding friendly nor made in Pharo ;) Also the moment you want to change something or hack something , welcome to C++ hell. You sacrifice native look and powerful features, you get a live easy to hack system in return. But as I said Pharo DOES NOT forbid you from using Native libraries of any sort, including GUI. The fact that the vast majority of pharo developers choose not to use native gui apis, says a lot about how desirable GUI APIs are compared to "non native look" Pharo GUI API which is called Morphic :)

Compare with for example this Lisp application:

http://opusmodus.com/user-interface.html

A new UI, but using tons of native elements...

Why talk about a music app that a small amount of people use while we can talk about the most popular pro music apps out there. The kind of apps that the whole music industry is based on. Cubase , Ableton Live, Logic and Reason.

Guess what .... they all have custom GUIs

http://rekkerd.org/img/201404/prop_reason71.jpg http://www.highprofileaudio.com/LogicPro_BIG1.jpg http://static.kvraudio.com/i/b/cubase5.jpg http://soundista.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ableton.png

When it comes to music and graphics, there is not even a contest. Custom GUI win hearts of the users. Same story with mobile apps and web apps.

As matter of fact even some of the apps that do use Native GUIs they reject the native look using their own custom look at least to an extend.

And the native look goes more and more towards popular custom guis we see in web apps, like flat design etc etc.

None of them uses its own Window system.

actually all of them do use their own Window system and far more than that.

Hmm, I just started Logic on my computer and it uses native windows and lots of native UI. There is a main window, preferences window, help window, keyboard window, colors window, metronom settings, ... there is a menu bar with ten menus - native. There are native open/save dialogs, ...

None of that is in Pharo. It uses a clunky font, clunky windows, clunky shadows on windows, clunky resizing of the main window, its own open/save dialogs, its own finder, ...

Looks dated to me...

I have not been using Logic that much, but I can assure you Ableto and Reason are custom drawn GUI all the way and so are the vast majority of VST instruments and effects.

Fonts that comes with Pharo by default is a bitmap font, you can replace it with any TrueType font in Pharo settings.

You can have setting windows, open/save dialogs, color windows and much more with Pharo's GUI. There is even a window manager that can help you manage multiple windows. Tab support , and much more.

If you hate Pharo GUI so much , dont use Pharo, nobody forces you to. None in the Pharo community has a problem improving the GUI (the GUI is actually improved in every release of Pharo) or even supporting native GUIs ( https://marsonpharo.wordpress.com/ ) but the community is very small and I think they are doing a great job for their size.

Personally I really like the GUI :)

> You can have setting windows, open/save dialogs, color windows and much more with Pharo's GUI.

That's not the point. It is just not used by the software itself.

> Personally I really like the GUI :)

I like the GUI of my Lisp Machine. But very very few people use it and it is behind the times in many ways.

> If you hate Pharo GUI so much

Pointing out that it is dated and clunky is not 'hating' it. If somebody asks me how a UI for development tool should look like, I would point out the importance of a native look and feel. Lighttable for example. A recent development. It's not really native. It uses complex web stuff on the desktop. Fail.

True, cross-platform development is tough. But it's somewhat possible. Example: https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

I still use Emacs in 2015, and Emacs is, basically, a strange non-native window system in a window. Smalltalk/Pharo is the same kind of thing, except less terminal-oriented—no?

Yes, exactly :)

(If you think about it, Java apps like Eclipse and so on, are also a tiny bit strange and non-native. They've come a long way towards blending in with native apps, over the years. But they still feel a bit off, from a native icon and windowing perspective.)

I use Emacs with windows. Native windows.

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