[cells-devel] cells and cells-gtk

[Ken Tilton]

[resending, Peter, to include the list]

Peter Denno wrote:

>Hi ken,
>
>It has been a while (2006-06-07 to be exact) since I have updated the cells 
>code in cells-gtk. Is there something in this new version, cells3, that would 
>make an upgrade worthwhile? Bug fixes? 
>
>  
>
Yes, some bug fixes, and a new concept: data integrity. Sounds
important, right? :) But I wrote an astonishing amount of reliable code
before getting serious about it, sooo... ah, but it was real-world apps
that forced me to get serious, so.... bottom line is that I think you
need to do it at some point or people will eventually hit the cases
where it matters, and I would not even call those edge cases. The new
scheme definitely made it easy to interface to Tk, which was needlessly
fussy about the order in which certain things happen, not good for a
declarative package like Cells that does things in whatever order it
happens to get to them.

The bad news is that Cells is not as transparent as it used to be,
because now if I want to SETF some cell in an observer I have to say:
(with-integrity (:change :id42) (setf <cell> 42)). The good news is the
data integrity and a formal model one can describe and understand and
plan for etc etc.

But it might be a big overhaul, especially because you too are talking
to an interesting package (GTk), so expect some excitement. If you
decide to do it I will see if I can quickly reinstall Cells-Gtk and play
along at home, but I am four weeks away from a big annual conference
where I will be showcasing my Algebra software and I am pretty busy.

cheers, ken

ps. I doubt the source is diff-able so you can find /just/ the things I
fixed that would also apply to your version, but mebbe. kt