Improving for new and/or average users.

[limira]

I am still not sure if I use this library or mine. But I think it worth raising this issue. How do you think about these?

1. Statically checking if a child (directly) is allowed in an element, an attribute is available for an element.
2. Add the Component as discuss in Update examples to separate view and state update! #12, and have an example demonstrating it.
3. Less mysterious macro, especially the clone! (at least document it).
4. Able to build directly with wasm-bindgen-cli or wasm-pack?

Personally, the first thing I do is looking at the examples. And my impression is: "Oh, what the hell is all this?" - totally new to signals; able to figure out about html!, but what does clone! do? when to use it? Looking for the document - no explanation for it. Look at the definition code? Uh oh, I am not good at it. I guess if users not desperately need this, they will move along.

(1) requires much more work, but give less obvious impact, but benefit in long term. Users may get frustrated if they accidentally assign an invalid attribute to an element. Because we are in Rust, we can help them avoid such situation. Especially for users who don't like to use the macro, IDEs can help showing available methods for an element.

[limira]

I forgot to say that I know what clone! do now. The improve is just for new users when they first look at dominator!

[Pauan]

Statically checking if a child (directly) is allowed in an element, an attribute is available for an element.

I have thought about that, but it's rather difficult to do, and even more difficult to do correctly. It's hard to keep it up-to-date, because every time a new attribute, element, or style is added to the W3C specs, you need to update the code to allow it.

And it gets even trickier when you consider browser support: some browsers might support an element/attribute/style while others don't. So allowing it at compile-time gives the false impression that your code is correct when it isn't.

And it gets even trickier when you consider custom elements, which can have custom names and attributes.

So instead I've generally favored runtime checking (e.g. dominator checks at runtime to make sure that your styles are correct). This catches bugs/typos without any of the above issues.

Add the Component as discuss in #12, and have an example demonstrating it.

I think any sort of component system needs to be carefully developed before I include it in dominator. I don't want to promote a half-baked solution, or a solution which will be deprecated and replaced later.

Luckily, it's easy to create your own components (in whatever style you wish), because dominator is very flexible.

After a component system has been tried and tested in real projects, then I can reevaluate whether to include it in dominator.

Less mysterious macro, especially the clone! (at least document it).

I completely agree that dominator needs a lot more documentation (it's on my todo list).

Able to build directly with wasm-bindgen-cli or wasm-pack?

Yes, my current number 1 priority is to port dominator so it works with wasm-bindgen.

[limira]

I have thought about that, but it's rather difficult to do, and even more difficult to do correctly. It's hard to keep it up-to-date, because every time a new attribute, element, or style is added to the W3C specs, you need to update the code to allow it.

Personally I am fine with all these downsides. I agree that it's very hard to do everything correctly, but I will give it a try. Decision is made, I will go with my library, although I am not sure what are waiting me in the future.

I think any sort of component system needs to be carefully developed before I include it in dominator. I don't want to promote a half-baked solution, or a solution which will be deprecated and replaced later.

I agree with this. Now, I feel that sending all messages to a single update method a bit awkward for a framework that base on signals. I tried to call directly to each method (similar to dominator, but encourage the separation of update and view by default), but in some special cases I found that I still need a single update method. Every approach have their trade-offs. Decisions are hard.

clone!

How about change the name to handler! or create_handler!. I think it less mysterious/confused.

[Pauan]

How about change the name to handler! or create_handler!. I think it less mysterious/confused.

How are those clearer? The clone! macro just calls the clone() method, that's it. Nothing more.

So these are the same:

clone!(x => y)

{
    let x = x.clone();
    y
}

In particular, the clone! macro has absolutely nothing to do with handlers. It is just a macro that makes cloning a bit more convenient, and it can be used on anything that implements Clone.

[limira]

Oh, sorry, handler! is more suitable for my own implementation. I did not think carefully enough before propose to dominator.

Yeah, from your view point, clone! seems a reasonable name. If a user understand what it does, it seems reasonable too.

But if a user know nothing before, then they read this (from dominator/examples/counter):

clone!(state => move |_: ClickEvent| {
    state.counter.replace_with(|x| *x + 1);
})

It just clones a tiny part of the whole big thing you pass to clone!. What are you thinking if you are not the author of clone!, not yet read the implementation of clone!? What does it mean? Cloning the whole big thing?

If you are happy with the name, I think, at least, it should be explained in the simplest example counter (by adding a comment for it).

[lambda-fairy]

Would it help if the macro were named with_clone! instead? That would better emphasize that it's some parameter being cloned, not the whole thing.

[limira]

Yeah, maybe, or clone_for!. But explanation is still needed, for example: in examples/counter:

// This will clone `state`, the cloned `state` will be moved into the closure.
clone_for!(state => move |_: ClickEvent| {
    state.counter.replace_with(|x| *x + 1);
})

[Pauan]

The real solution is to have proper documentation + a tutorial, which I already mentioned I will do.

[Zireael07]

Where do I find docs/tutorial?

[Pauan]

@Zireael07 Sorry, since I no longer contribute to Rust I haven't made any documentation. Your best option is to look at the examples or ask questions on the Discord server.

There is also the Signals tutorial which gives a basic overview of Signals (which is important, since they are used a lot in dominator).

[d4h0]

since I no longer contribute to Rust

Out of curiosity: did you write somewhere why?

[Pauan]

@d4h0 I might get banned from GitHub for sharing this, but...

The Rust team recently declared their official support for the Black Lives Matter movement:

https://blog.rust-lang.org/2020/06/04/Rust-1.44.0.html

https://twitter.com/rustlang/status/1267519580756422659

https://twitter.com/rustlang/status/1267519582505512960

Black Lives Matter is a violent political organization that has looted, burned buildings, and murdered innocent black people and black police:

https://archive.is/MmeZg

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2015/09/02/exposing-black-lives-matter-for-what-it-is-promotion-of-cop-jilling-n2046941

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_David_Dorn

They have been known to be violent and evil for many years. They have publicly admitted to be Marxists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCghDx5qN4s

And they have stated that one of their goals is the destruction of Western families:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200408020723/https://blacklivesmatter.com/what-we-believe/

And the money donated to Black Lives Matter is used to fund the Democrat Party in the US:

https://twitter.com/RealCandaceO/status/1271062636315193346

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/exclusive-donations-including-international-funding-blacklivesmatter-com-go-directly-dnc-money-laundering/

There have been many black people who have come out against Black Lives Matter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLuJa9X21PE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4BveH3iTFM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JocOjvPizzY

Anybody who questions the Rust team on their decision is silenced and told to stop using Rust:

https://twitter.com/halfnibble/status/1267544911697469440

https://twitter.com/nokusu/status/1267547090307239942

https://users.rust-lang.org/t/rust-says-tech-will-always-be-political/43627

Rust is supposed to be an inclusive and welcoming programming language, taking political sides (regardless of the side) goes against that goal.

Also, although the Rust team thinks that promoting Black Lives Matter is a good thing, they did not support the millions of peaceful Hong Kong protestors who were fighting for their basic human rights. That seems very hypocritical to me. Rust is supposed to be international, yet they seem to only care about US issues.

In addition, there has been some very recent extreme moderator abuse by Rust Core Team members:

https://files.catbox.moe/7k3qdh.png

https://files.catbox.moe/le86vq.png

Unfortunately I believe that things will only become worse over time. There will be more forced politics in Rust, and more moderator abuse in the future. Anybody who tries to remain neutral will be silenced and banned.

[d4h0]

Thanks for the detailed response, @Pauan!

To be honest, I agree with you 100%.

The "Black Lives Matter" release announcement, and what I found out during the surrounding hubbub, made me a bit depressed (I had invested much time and effort to learn Rust, and I had a similar outlook in regard to Rust's future, as you).

In the end, I decided to continue to use Rust for two reasons:

A) I don't know anything better,

and B) I assume that what makes these people behave in this way is also the reason why they invest their time in improving Rust (assuming these people contribute significantly to Rust. I'm not 100% sure if this is true, however).

I also hope that the situation will improve when the dust has settled.

Because these people are so invested into this cause, it's difficult for them to see the problems that it turned out to have (they probably can see problems, but think that it's still worth it).

The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene is a good book that explains how this happens.

Out of curiosity: what are you using now?

The only alternative to Rust I know (for what I use it) is OCaml/ReasonML, but the ecosystem is too small/inactive.

[Pauan]

I also hope that the situation will improve when the dust has settled.

I do not think it will improve. Multiple people on the Core Rust team are very radical leftists/communists, they will always put their agenda and ideology first. If that was not true, they would not feel the need to censor anybody who speaks out.

And with the upcoming election, things will only get even worse.

Out of curiosity: what are you using now?

At work I use TypeScript. For my personal projects... I don't program much anymore. I have not found any other language which comes close to the technical excellence of Rust. But I have considered making my own language...

Even Rust will degrade over time, because Alex has moved away from Rust (he did 90+% of the work on Rust Wasm), and Ashley is now in full control over Rust Wasm.

[kindlychung]

HK rioters are more violent than BLM by every measure. They literally put some old man on fire for holding a different political view.