Curl Mobile

[RobertShiplett]

Adobe has dropped Flash for mobile, iPad and other - so what is critical to know is this: how soon can we test Curl 9 on beta Windows Pad 8 ?

The demise of Air and Silverlight is great news for Curl.

What HTML5 (now simply HTML) offers is video.

What Curl offers is so much more.

Will we wrap WebKit as our EmbeddedBrowserGraphic engine?

Will we add LineVisual to complement TextVisual and ParagraphVisual? A 'LineVisual' would address the many problems facing an equivalent for float left, float tight, in HTML+CSS without resorting to explicit HBox in a {paragraph } - required for page-without-tables which is now the HTML "div" norm for non-tabular presentations.

A LineVisual could be styled as an unbroken Line across the display - somethig which is more that Text and less than Paragraph. A LineVisual would accept keywords left: center: right: .

I believe that is is needed to fully exploit pad computing for maintainable presentations. Yes, we can now do it - but who would want to pay to program it and to maintain it?

And no: {table or {Table is not the answer for styling rich text presentations. That ship has sailed.

At some later release, I hope we can address the need to support more than one non-breakable space and to support breaking- and nonbreakable- hypens.

Yes, ParagraphVisual at this time, in Curl 8.0, is marvelous, it is wonderful.

If a paragraph is a TextFlowBox, think of a LineVisual as a TextFlowRow (no, this cannot be achieved with text-breakable?=false on its own - this not about 'break' but about text and graphics with balanced alignment left, right and centre without explicit HBox, Fill and {make-elastic} .)

If you believe that you can style a line of text-with-graphics to have a left, a center and a right element such that the alignment is preserved vertically in the subsequent lines of text, please post a tech note. But remember: introduction of a floating element in a line must not damage the inter-line spacing - especially with preceeding and following lines which ave no such elements. Try that with Curl 8 paragraphs and you will know the challenge ... see my Shakespeare Sonnet 116 effort.
HINT: you could try this with styling TextShape.

One suggestion: while {text } can be used anywhere, {line } would be accepted only in a ParagraphVisual container - yes, rather like HTML span's floating left and right in a div.

A paragraph with lines that each have two right elements would be adequate for styling a poem in Chinese or Japanese.

ParagraphVisual would then pass from wonderful to exquisite.

[RobertShiplett]

You might try this in a docs {example } box:

{import TextShape from CURL.GUI.SHAPES}

{paragraph text-breakable? = false,

{HBox {Fill width={make-elastic preferred-size=1cm}} , {TextShape halign=0.5, "testing\ "} ,{Fill width={make-elastic preferred-size=10cm}} ,{TextShape halign="right", "tested\ "}}
{br}
{HBox {Fill width={make-elastic preferred-size=1cm}} , {TextShape halign=0.5, "testing2"} ,{Fill width={make-elastic preferred-size=10cm}} ,{TextShape halign="right", "tested2"}}
}

If you remove the 2 non-breaking spaces (themselves a practical non-starter) you will see the breakdown.
Enter stage left: more HBox's in a paragraph?

ParagraphVisual is a subclass of TextVisual.
TextElement is undocumented ?
LineVisual would be a subclass of TextVisual ?

[RobertShiplett]

SHORT VERSION:

TextElement does not have halign or valign properties.

{table } is the trivial solution - and inappropriate in a page of text (a TextFlowBox containig ParagraphVisual's.)

[RobertShiplett]

Google says this was one of 3 motives for the recent redesign of GMail:

"
Elasticity: The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from your desktop computer to your mobile phone to your tablet, while keeping a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness.
"

Now there, elastics, is where Curl on Mobile can shine !