Add dist/ to .gitignore except on pages-published branch

[ihh]

we discussed using gh-pages, but anything simple enough for me to understand would be fine :)

[cmdcolin]

Gotcha I'll see what I can come up with

[cmdcolin]

Depending on how we want this setup, we could just say "dist exists on master branch, and serve the github pages from master branch" which might be perfectly fine. It's unclear if it's worth it to add complications

If we do not want this, there are different options for proceeding

• If the dist directory is to be deployed by itself to for example npm, then it's kind of better to be "just JS" and not the "JS and html demo"
• So then we want to probably just deploy "demo" to the gh-pages branch
• And then we need to, for example, demo would be non-functional without a built dist, so then demo on the master branch would be non-functional if dist is gitignored unless the user builds it

At this point, we basically start looking like how create-react-app behaves, except you just rename demo to public

So essentially, we can switch to create-react-app or create-react-app style infrastructure, or follow the steps above, or just deploy entire contents of master to gh-pages

[cmdcolin]

CC @rbuels

[cmdcolin]

We could also transition this module to react, as mentioned in previous mailing list thread https://github.com/cmdcolin/tree-align-view-react/blob/master/src/App.js

Depending on outcome of threads like #9 it might not actually be react but might still want to consider componentizing it similarly

[ihh]

I was saying to @rbuels this morning I can see React might make more sense long-term, but if we transition it too early I can see myself spending more time on the React learning curve than on actually being able to prototype anything. It may be that it's nearly at the state where that makes sense. I think the major significant next steps are scaling and performance for the animations. After that it's relatively minor stuff (I think)

[rbuels]

If anybody wants to explore webgl+shaders rendering, this might be a good place to do it since we are deep in prototype land. Here's the library vscode uses for rendering its embedded terminal using webgl: https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js/tree/master/addons/xterm-addon-webgl

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 3:31 PM Ian Holmes notifications@github.com wrote:

I was saying to @rbuels https://github.com/rbuels this morning I can see React might make more sense long-term, but if we transition it too early I can see myself spending more time on the React learning curve than on actually being able to prototype anything. It may be that it's nearly at the state where that makes sense. I think the major significant next steps are scaling and performance for the animations. After that it's relatively minor stuff (I think)

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/ihh/tree-align-view/issues/22#issuecomment-602891670, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAASAFI46JUSVMBCVCMEM2LRI7PNFANCNFSM4LSAV6WQ .

[cmdcolin]

I saw it looks like there is already a github.io demo online https://ihh.github.io/tree-align-view/html/demo.html

Unless we really want to keep master branch clean I might just keep dist on the master branch for now

[cmdcolin]

Regarding react, I would be a big proponent of it. I think it helps a lot and would be a good thing for us to transition to earlier rather than later.

[ihh]

OK couple quick questions though:

1. How nicely would React play with having non-React elements in a page (i.e. the pv viewer)?
2. Would React limit us if we start using Canvas (HTML5 or WebGL)?

[cmdcolin]

1) It is fine with non-react stuff, it can be managed 2) Canvas and webgl is fine, you conceive of the process of rendering as a bit different but it is certainly supported. The https://github.com/cmdcolin/tree-align-view-react/blob/master/src/App.js has the TreeCanvas component with a canvas element

[cmdcolin]

Note that https://cmdcolin.github.io/tree-align-view-react/ was updated so that click to collapse node works recently

[ihh]

Thanks - one more question - what about animations? I am pretty strongly attached to those :-)

If we/you can reproduce the full functionality in React (including animated transitions for collapsing/expanding rows and columns of the alignment) then I am in favor, and if so I will hand the project over to you for the conversion