Basil.js Team Call Agenda (plz ignore)

Team Call xx.xx.2016 w/ ???

• discussion b.property() and b.transforms(), see #43
• update docs
• docs deployment to website
• general direction of basil.js, especially in relation to Processing and p5.js
• rough timeline/planing for Basil 2.0 release
• expanding functionality for working with Files and Folders (will try to write an issue before the call)
• to-dos and priorities (what is important to do first, for others to continue on their stuff)
• still needed https://github.com/basiljs/basil.js/blob/master/roadmap.md

What is Basil.js 2.0?

Hi guys. I've been thinking in the last few days about Basil and have some ideas and suggestions I'd like to share with you. So here it comes.

b less

Removing the b is already on its way. Great. The question for me is should we really keep the b/ or pub around to stay backwards compatible? IMO not.

• It makes development harder
• semver states that a major version bump may introduce breaking changes

make everything a function

We have some parts where we use

function name(){…

And others where it is

var name = function (){…

I think we should go for the first one

make all functions global

No wired nesting and stuff like that. I see Basil as a Sketchbook for ideas and teaching programming. I would not use it in production. I'm sure I would lend some stuff though. 😏

So I think it is safe to move to global scope (as we already do). This would also allow the setup and draw suggestions that come a bit further down.

allow function overwrites

It actually is okay to overwrite functions. We just should warn the user about it.

get rid of go

I think we should try to get rid of go as well. If we already add everything to global scope we should be able to execute setup and draw automatically. (I think).

setup and draw

To make the library even more Processing like I suggest the following:

• setup stays at it is executed once
• draw becomes the loop
• loop gets removed
• modes become their own function
• scripts without setup and draw should work as well

I actually never use the loop. I know Ted does and maybe others do as well. I also know this would mean re-factoring all the examples but this can be done with Regex in an hour or two.

I currently don't have an idea how to handle the target engines but we'll figure it out.

docs and site as GitHub pages

To be able to update the docs we need access. The site can be served on its domain directly from GitHub. This is one tweak on the settings of the server and some huge changes on the docs. This would allow the current maintainers to fix bugs on the site as well (there is still some dead links in it #xx) and add new feature documentation in a timely manner. Maybe we also should try to include the docs for js and InDesign like grefel or wridgers did. So we can point our students to one documentation.

There are other things missing like:

• a getting started guide that is up to date with the current install process and goes further then saying: try one of the examples.

Minor changes

• function doc should become document (we don't use abbreviations anywhere except this one and typo). doc for me is always a own variable not a function.

what for 3.0?

I think at some point we should move on to CEP extension. This would give us:

• the power of Nodejs
• remove the need for platform specific hacks
• maybe get rid of the ESTK ( im thinking IDE in ID maybe with a ACE editor)
• get rid of the include statement
• make the installation easier (one click zxp installs)
• easier management of sketchbook location
• build in examples
• tbd

Of course this is somewhere in the future.

Any thoughts (I suggest opening new issues for topics we want to talk about and mention them so we don't create confusion in this one single thread)?