Vlojure is a visual programming interface for ClojureScript. You can use vlojure by visiting vlojure.io in your browser.
Local Development
To work on vlojure, clone the repo and run npm i to install the npm dependencies.
Live
To use Shadow CLJS's "watch" mode while developing, which first run clojure -M:server in the root directory. This starts up local stasis development server on localhost:3000. Then, run npm run watch in the root directory to start in watch mode.
Exporting
To export an optimized release build, run npm run release && clojure -M:export. This will create an "out" directory that contains the exported static site.
TODO
- Optimize. Right now the app essentially re-renders everything each frame. Instead, elements should only be redrawn when the app state has changed in a relevant way.
- Fix mobile UI issues. Vlojure is intended in large part for use on touch-screen mobile devices, but right now there are some issues that impact usability on mobile. Known issues include:
- App does not respond properly to the presence of virtual keyboards
- On iOS (or at least iPad), html text input elements are not large enough vertically. They seem to be roughly half the height they should be.
- On android, when tapping to edit a sufficiently small literal, the page automatically zooms in in a way that disrupts the normal view of the app. It does not go back to normal once the user finishes editing the literal.
- Let user drag formbars around on the settings page. If the user has a formbar on one side of their screen and they'd like to instead have it on another side, right now they have to just create an empty formbar on the new side and manually move each element over. I'd like the user to be able to drag entire formbars to different sides of the screen.
- Organize map elements in two concentric rings, with keys in one ring and vals in another, rather than having both keys and vals in a single ring.
- It may also be best to organize bindings in "let" expressions this way.
- Add Quil mode. Quil is a library for Clojure and ClojureScript that provides wrappers around Processing and p5js, respectively. Vlojure's Quil mode will let users create 2D animations on any device directly in their browser,
- Make native mobile apps for android and iOS.
- Add Special Formbars. Special formbars will work differently from normal formbars. The user won't be able to edit the contents of special formbars, but instead the contents will be decided by the app itself. Special formbars should be movable/removable just like normal formbars. Right now the two kinds of special formbars I have planned are:
- A bar that displays your N most recently placed forms.
- A bar that displays all of the bound symbols at your current location in your program. The symbols will be ordered based on their scope, with the narrowest bindings at the start of the bar, and broader-scoped bindings later in the bar.
- Prevent the app from hanging when the user tries to evaluate an infinite sequence, or otherwise gets stuck in an infinite loop.
- Give the user more feedback about errors. Right now when an evaluation ends in an error, the user just sees a big "X" in the eval zone. Instead, they should recieve more detail about the nature of the error.