[Idea] Consider adding a "generic, componentized editor" to the whole glimmer suite (in addition to gladiator, or, perhaps extending gladiator's use cases to also include simple editor variants) [update: focus on Glimmer DSL for LibUI only]

[rubyFeedback]

So this suggestion is a tiny bit more "serious", but, as always the disclaimer
is to please feel free to ignore/close/modify in any way shape or form.

Before I describe it in more details, let me also preface that evidently your time is
limited and you have been doing tons of stuff lately in regards to glimmer - your
comparison to shoes (I think we can call why's original shoes more like as
a basic first step towards DSL-syntax), glimmer + video stuff (widget)
and glimmer + wxruby3. On gladiator you also point out that your goal is NOT
to write a mega-super-feature-rich editor with a billion features.

This suggestion here is a bit more on a per-app specific suggestion, a bit
like kojix2 libui-radio widget focusing on playing audio files, but I will focus
on ... an editor.

I'll explain that in a moment, but I would also like to point out that
you have that editor widget via SWT called "gladiator":

https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-cs-gladiator

You also provide a screenshot on windows, so I assume that it works very
well on windows - this already covers one "use case necessity" I have
with my suggestion here, which I will explain in a moment:

https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-cs-gladiator/raw/master/images/glimmer-gladiator-windows.png

I do not know how easy it is to customize your editor. The more customizable
the better, I think.

I believe that one small issue may be that users may need java and swt
on windows too, right? It is probably not a big deal, but I mention it
just in case, since this can provide a small obstacle to some folks
(even though you tend to provide excellent documentation, which I think
is always good, even if it may sometimes appear "too much" - personally
I ALWAYS prefer projects that rather have too much documentation than
projects that lack documentation. In my experience the latter tend to
be abandoned more easily too, but I digress, so back onto the topic.)

For instance, in the past I did not even know how to install java - it took me
a while how to figure that out, and lateron I was using just Graalvm's
java variant, which works fine on windows too.

I was not doing much libui-related stuff in the last 6 or 8 weeks or so, but
lately my interest has increased again, in part due to the video-widget thing
you showed.

I still want some kind of mega-IDE or platform via libui-ng+ruby
on windows - like all apps would have something that can relate
to libui too! And we could use these on windows without necessarily
needing windows. (Or on all platforms, actually - the glimmer desktop!) :D

Anyway.

Yesterday I looked at kojix2' libui bindings again, and in the examples
I noticed the simple editor:

https://github.com/kojix2/LibUI/blob/main/examples/simple_notepad.rb

Well, it does not really have any features, but actually I think this
is also not bad, IF we can think of this as a "componentized editor".

With that I kind of mean to allow the user to declare/define how
feature-rich an editor is.

Now let's for a moment assume it were possible to have an editor
like gladiator via libui-ng one day, just for the sake of
the idea here.

People could kind of declare how feature-rich that editor would
be.

In pseudo-syntax from glimmer commandline, say this:

glimmer --simple-editor
glimmer --medium-editor
glimmer --gladiator # as means to just start the gladiator editor,
                    # through bin/glimmer or whatever the name of
                    # the executable would be; as an example how to
                    # start any glimmer-app actually, so if we'd
                    # have a "glimmestore" like an "appstore",
                    # we could still use the glimmer executable
                    # to start any of these, and integrate the
                    # installed stuff into the --help display for
                    # bin/glimmer as well as include that 
                    # functionality, like "glimmer --tetris" and
                    # so forth. I hope you understand my idea,
                    # where we can start any glimmer-app from the
                     # commandline too, 
                    # but this is the smaller idea, so let's
                    # continue with the main editor

The basic idea here is to be able to offer a "componentized editor"
as much as possible via glimmer, in as many different GUIs as
possible, including the www stack. Again, this is just an idea -
please don't assume it is my attempt to say "I'm gonna use Andy's
spare time because I myself am too lazy to do it". :)

So, what could be a slightly more feature-rich editor?

Three small examples:

• Offer a save-buffer functionality (per tab)
• Offer tabs on the editor to allow user to modify multiple files
• Offer a second widget keeping track of the line numbers

And so on and so forth, increasing the feature set, until it
eventually reaches the complex feature set that gladiator allows.

So the idea here is that the user could ideally have as many
or as few components possible, while still having an editor.
Like a really adjustable editor.

The primary focus here I'd see is on windows. On Linux I tend
to use an ancient editor, but on windows I sometimes just
need notepad, and notepad is mega-simple really. I think
libui-ng could be used as a notepad replacement too, but
even as a more extended editor. (Obviously you already
cover that use case via gladiator on windows, but I am
thinking more in terms of libui-ng or any other feature
set here, including the www stack, perhaps via opal too.
Having it work on the browser would be kind of cool too, like
we could have an editor that we could use in the browser. In
practice this may be a bit difficult since browsers tend to be
in a sandbox environment, but, if it were possible to save
files via a browser easily that would be great. Perhaps node/npm
allows for that already; I know too little about that to be able to
tell. I am more thinking about this in terms of "as many platforms
and areas as possible")

So why do I think that an editor would be important and useful?
Why should it go and become part of a "glimmer apps spec"?

You already offer several applications, including games -
like snake game, tetris game and so forth. So you kind
of have an "appstore" already, if we look at these as
apps - the "glimmerstore". :D (I can already envision a
logo for that ... anything that sparkles with glimmer
and like a candybox hehehe... or like a loot box or
a treasure box or something. Anyway.)

I believe that an editor could be useful to have for the
glimmer suite in the long run. And, starting with a
SIMPLE one, like a "clone" of notepad.exe to keep it
simple too. But, if a user wants more features, to also
offer that.

Now writing a complicated, feature-rich editor can be
a lot of work - we see that via vim and emacs. I am
not proposing that this goes over-board really, so
my idea is also to CONFINE it to specific "components"
that are used in many different editors.

Technically this can all use the same code base - well,
glimmer kind of does that, yes? We can shuffle and
exchange code and it may work for many things, like,
again a contrived example:

glimmer --gtk --editor
glimmer --wxruby --editor
glimmer --tk --editor
glimmer --libui --editor
glimmer --libui-ng --editor

Or, say, with an existing code base like tetris:

glimmer --gtk --tetris
glimmer --wxruby --tetris
glimmer --tk --tetris
glimmer --libui --tetris
glimmer --libui-ng --tetris

I hope you can kind of see a bit what I mean here.

Having an editor available then means that people
could write code in ruby, even on windows (again,
it's already possible via gladiator I assume, but
I am thinking like of a SIMPLE editor with a FEW
features, say, 5 ones at max to keep it simple,
and then have THAT editor work on as many different
ways as possible).

If we abstract away things then we could also say
that glimmer could be a general specification
irrespective of the language. So right now glimmer
focuses on ruby and java I assume, but in theory
we could say all languages could use it and adjust
to the DSL (and the DSL then eventually being a
specification; I see that you are improving it as
you go anyway, e. g. your recent entry in the
todo file handling events via "on_event_NAME"
or something like that). And then eventually call it,
one day, the glimmer DSL or glimmer specification
(and perhaps version it, to allow users to refer to
it for stable applications).

Anyway. I'll finish that idea here. I hope it makes some
sense. I kind of envision a mega-meta-glimmer one day,
like where different people may use different languages
but even just describe what they want, without necessarily
needing to be ABLE to write code, and still have useful
features. Of course we could say that EVERY application
may be useful, and I do not disagree, but I think an
editor may be a little more important from a usability
point of view than a game (even though, of course, we
can argue that more people may enjoy playing a game
than using an editor, so I don't disagree with that;
I just consider an editor to be rather important because
I tend to write a lot of code, and I assume you in general
also tend to write a lot considering the wealth of documentation
and code. So I assume an editor is also important for your
own use case.)

[rubyFeedback]

Of course we can also extend this idea onto gladiator, but I do not know how customizable it is,
and gladiator is a bit different to e. g. what we can do via libui-ng. I assume you simply have
more options available thanks to SWT. But, being able to have a simpler variant for gladiator
and a more customizable variant of gladiator would be nice too - I am more focused on an editor for the
WHOLE glimmer suite, whereas I believe gladiator requires java/swt even if I may be mistaken. It just
feels a tiny bit different to my idea here, which is why I filed that here rather than on the
gladiator issue tracker.

[AndyObtiva]

I moved this issue to the Gladiator (Glimmer Editor) project.

This issue’s scope is too large. It’s discouraged in software engineering to work on too large a thing at a time. It’s better to break this down or limit its scope, and then open another issue later. Let’s address it at the scope of Glimmer DSL for LibUI first. You can write requirements at a high level and store somewhere in a word doc or some GitHub repo, but please don’t create issues that are too large. They kill motivation with their overwhelming size. As per software engineering incremental development recommendations, it’s better to keep issue reports short and sweet, then open other ones as needed in the future.

Otherwise, you’re an expert software engineer, and Glimmer offers the simplest way to write apps, so I’m not sure why you ask me for something like this instead of respectfully putting in your own effort to show you care to support me, and then only asking me questions if you did your best and failed. You even said ‘please don't assume it is my attempt to say "I'm gonna use Andy's
spare time because I myself am too lazy to do it"‘, but your actions speak otherwise. Actions speak louder than words! If you had created a GitHub project for a Glimmer LibUI editor and then asked me a question after putting in a best effort, your words would have matched your actions.

Anyways, you’re fortunate regarding this issue though because it’s already on my radar for Gladiator and Glimmer DSL for LibUI. I’ve been planning to finish support for custom shapes first to use that in building a code editor on top of the area control. That would extend the work I already did on code_area :
https://github.com/AndyObtiva/glimmer-dsl-libui/blob/master/docs/examples/GLIMMER-DSL-LIBUI-BASIC-EXAMPLES.md#basic-code-area