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Show HN: Radi, my HTML5 content creation app (Mac)

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Re: Show HN: Radi, my HTML5 content creation app (Mac)

#31

Post by dochtman »

pavlov wrote: post #2

Radi is a side project of mine that has kept me occupied for the better part of 2010. I'm very happy to finally have it in a half-presentable state, just in time for 2011! What's that they say about the first release -- "if you're not embarrassed, you waited too long?" Well, this is that one for me :) It's scary to put this app out there to the whole world in its current condition, but I feel like I've reached a dead…

Why is there no browser engine? It would seem like your method of "writing my own of everything I need" doesn't really scale well to something like the entire browser stack. And it appears that WebKit should not be that hard to integrate (in the general case, not sure about this kind of authoring app).

You may have a good reason, I just can't think of it off the top of my head.

Re: Show HN: Radi, my HTML5 content creation app (Mac)

#32

Post by pavlov »

snprbob86 wrote: post #23

Very cool! Nice job. I noticed this: "Radi makes creating vector graphics easier with its unique autosmoothed shapes. When you apply smoothing to a corner point, all your control points lie precisely on the shape's outline. There are no separate "handles" or "tangent points" to be tweaked outside of the actual shape." Just wanted to point out that, to me, that sounds like an anti-feature. Maybe it's a nice alternativ…

Just wanted to point out that, to me, that sounds like an anti-feature. Maybe it's a nice alternative tool for quick, smooth shapes, but I've watched many an illustrator tweak the hell out of those things to get exactly the right curves and sharp angles.

Right. I know that illustrators love their Bézier handles, but I'm not 100% convinced that everybody else loves them all that much. I used to do graphics for a living, and I never felt very comfortable with Béziers (although that was also because my style was pretty much opposite to sharp vector designs).

The Radi curve engine does support Béziers, but implementing the UI for managing the control points seemed like a complete drag (what a terrible pun).

So I figured that maybe I should try doing what Apple does so well: market the "anti-feature" as something new and unique. No handles -> less UI complexity -> ??? -> profit!

I was also inspired by 3D modelling applications, where a lot of work is done with subdivision surfaces which are controlled by automatic control points, essentially similar to the curves in Radi. I know there was an older generation of modelling apps with free-floating handles, and I get the impression that modellers are happy to be rid of those (but maybe I'm wrong about this one).

Re: Show HN: Radi, my HTML5 content creation app (Mac)

#33

Post by pavlov »

Corrado wrote: post #28

Can it consume external data sources easily? At my company we have an XML RSS feed that I would like to transform into some sort of infographic display (dynamic bar charts, moving pie charts, tables, etc.) Currently, we are solving this problem with a mish-mash of Ruby/Sinatra and jQuery/Raphaël but its not clean or easy. Would this be something that Radi could help us build and maintain?

That sounds like a very reasonable avenue to explore.

I've done a fair amount of work with dataflow UIs in the past, and it sounds like this could be an opportunity to leverage that work. To illustrate, here's a sample screenshot from my other product, Conduit Live (a video compositing app):

  http://lacquer.fi/images/cl2_screenshot_drowned_3.jpg
This kind of "connect-the-blocks" interface could work for describing the data loads and transformations in your use case. What do you think?

Re: Show HN: Radi, my HTML5 content creation app (Mac)

#34

Post by pavlov »

dochtman wrote: post #31
pavlov wrote: post #2

Radi is a side project of mine that has kept me occupied for the better part of 2010. I'm very happy to finally have it in a half-presentable state, just in time for 2011! What's that they say about the first release -- "if you're not embarrassed, you waited too long?" Well, this is that one for me :) It's scary to put this app out there to the whole world in its current condition, but I feel like I've reached a dead…

Why is there no browser engine? It would seem like your method of "writing my own of everything I need" doesn't really scale well to something like the entire browser stack. And it appears that WebKit should not be that hard to integrate (in the general case, not sure about this kind of authoring app). You may have a good reason, I just can't think of it off the top of my head.

Well, of course the real reason is simply that I wanted to make use of the stuff that I already had written, which consisted primarily of a fast compositing engine with JavaScript hooks. (I'm not one of those people who want to start from scratch for each project.)

But I do think there is a solid case for this approach. Consider something like image filters and applying them to video. If the authoring UI were implemented in WebKit, I don't know how I could get realtime responsiveness for video manipulation. Now it's no problem in Radi because the rendering bottleneck to produce actual browser-playable content only happens upon publishing.

Being on the native side gives me a theoretical edge when it comes to new browser features -- I'm thinking of something like visual effects which may be supported only by Mozilla but not WebKit, or vice versa. Not being married with a specific engine could be an advantage.

It's worth mentioning that Radi does actually use WebKit to render the content in HTML layers. So you can place custom HTML within a document, and it's rendered with browser-style text antialiasing within the app. (It's not dynamic, though -- just a snapshot of the HTML rendering.)

Re: Show HN: Radi, my HTML5 content creation app (Mac)

#36

Post by tluyben2 »

pavlov wrote: post #33
Corrado wrote: post #28

Can it consume external data sources easily? At my company we have an XML RSS feed that I would like to transform into some sort of infographic display (dynamic bar charts, moving pie charts, tables, etc.) Currently, we are solving this problem with a mish-mash of Ruby/Sinatra and jQuery/Raphaël but its not clean or easy. Would this be something that Radi could help us build and maintain?

That sounds like a very reasonable avenue to explore. I've done a fair amount of work with dataflow UIs in the past, and it sounds like this could be an opportunity to leverage that work. To illustrate, here's a sample screenshot from my other product, Conduit Live (a video compositing app): http://lacquer.fi/images/cl2_screenshot_drowned_3.jpg This kind of "connect-the-blocks" interface could work for describing the…

That looks like something that could work. Inspiration for that of course also from Yahoo Pipes which is made for services processing ; you can probably integrate a similar idea to create graphical representations of (processed) services. However, that would make it quite a different app and out-of-scope from what you are doing at the moment.

Re: Show HN: Radi, my HTML5 content creation app (Mac)

#37

Post by Pewpewarrows »

Very nice work! I've been wondering when someone would decide to go head-to-head with Adobe in the new world of HTML5 while they're still dragging their feet.

I'd especially love to see this ported to Linux. Also, is there a place where we can donate? I don't exactly have $200 to throw down on your other piece of software, and I don't own any iOS devices for your $1 app.

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