System

System is the framework and API layer for creating Whimsy.Space apps.

• app
  • Base
• aws
• fs
  • Dexie IndexedDB
  • Package Explore a package as a filesystem
  • Mount A meta-file system where that mounts other systems as paths.
  • S3 AWS S3
• pkg Utilities for loading, building, running packages.
• ui
  • applyStyle(styleSource, name) TODO: this should be automatic in most cases
  • Bindable TODO: Not quite the right place?
  • ContextMenu
  • Jadelet
  • MenuBar
  • Modal
  • Observable
  • Progress
  • Window
• util
  • Postmaster

Architecture

fs

The filesystem has common operations for listing, reading, writing, and deleting files. Both local and cloud backends are implemented. Different systems can be mounted at paths and have events translated cleanly. That's some of the magic that powers My Briefcase.

pkg

Build and run applications with packaging.

Deprecated parseDependencyPath(string, registry) parses a path to resolve a package shorthand to an https url. These paths are used in declaring dependencies in package configs like:

dependencies:
  postmaster: "distri/postmaster:master"

We should just switch to using https urls. If a specific build tool wants to handle short names or a registry then that is up to the tool.

htmlBlob(pkg, opts) Create a blob object containing html of the package with a self executing wrapper. This blob can then be published as a standalone webpage or launched inside an iframe.

ui

Artisanal User Interface

Menus

• Context Menu
• Menu Bar
• Nested submenus

Simple DSL for creating menus and binding to handlers.

{ContextMenu} = require "ui"

contextMenu = ContextMenu()
document.body.appendChild contextMenu.element

Modals

• Alert
• Confirm
• Prompt

Promise returning prompts, confirms, etc.

Actions

Hotkeys, help text, icons, enabled/disabled states.

Z-Indexes

Is there a sane way to do z-indexes? Right now I'm just listing them.

Modal: 1000 Context Menu: 2000

Naming Conventions

system provides many namespaces such as system.fs, system.ui, etc. Namespaces are lower case.

Those namespaces provide constructors and methods. Methods are lower initial camel-case:

system.util.style(...)

Constructors are upper initial camel-case and should not be called with new.

system.ui.Window(...)

Runtime

Experimenting with delegating more App plumbing to system through app.Base.

Currently implemented as something like this in ZineOS:

self.executePackageInIFrame
  distribution:
    main:
      content: """
        global.app = system.app.Base({
          pkg: PACKAGE
        });
        require("./app");
        app.trigger("boot");
      """
    app:
      content: source
  dependencies:
    "!system": PACKAGE.dependencies["!system"]

It makes a shim package, passing ZineOS's !system dependency through, then initializing a global app using the runtime's system.app.Base to wire up all the biz, then requires the single app file. Finally it triggers the boot event for the app.

This kind of pattern may make its way into a util in system one day. Still experimenting with the details.

Deprecations

system.client is a deprecated namespace from when system was synonymous with system.host and all the other namespaces lived under system.client.