giles
b0920a1121
Component names now reflect filesystem location using / as path separator and : as namespace separator for shared components: ~sx-header → ~layouts/header ~layout-app-body → ~shared:layout/app-body ~blog-admin-dashboard → ~admin/dashboard 209 files, 4,941 replacements across all services. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
3 lines
8.6 KiB
Plaintext
3 lines
8.6 KiB
Plaintext
(defcomp ~essays/sx-native/essay-sx-native ()
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(~docs/page :title "SX Native: Beyond the Browser" (~docs/section :title "The thesis" :id "thesis" (p :class "text-stone-600" "sx.js is a ~2,300-line tree-walking interpreter with ~50 primitives. The DOM is just one rendering target. Swap the DOM adapter for a platform-native adapter and you get React Native — but with s-expressions and a 50-primitive surface area.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "The interpreter does not know about HTML. It evaluates expressions, calls primitives, expands macros, and hands render instructions to an adapter. The adapter creates elements. Today that adapter creates DOM nodes. It does not have to.")) (~docs/section :title "Why this isn\'t a WebView" :id "not-webview" (p :class "text-stone-600" "SX Native means the sx evaluator rendering to native UI widgets directly. No DOM. No CSS. No HTML. (button :on-press handler \"Submit\") creates a native UIButton on iOS, a Material Button on Android, a GtkButton on Linux.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "WebView wrappers (Cordova, Capacitor, Electron) ship a browser inside your app. They inherit all browser limitations: memory overhead, no native feel, no platform integration. SX Native has none of these because there is no browser.")) (~docs/section :title "Architecture" :id "architecture" (p :class "text-stone-600" "The architecture splits into shared and platform-specific layers:") (ul :class "space-y-2 text-stone-600 mt-2" (li (strong "Shared (portable):") " Parser, evaluator, all 50+ primitives, component system, macro expansion, closures, component cache") (li (strong "Platform adapters:") " Web DOM, iOS UIKit/SwiftUI, Android Compose, Desktop GTK/Qt, Terminal TUI, WASM")) (p :class "text-stone-600" "Only ~15 rendering primitives need platform-specific implementations. The rest — arithmetic, string operations, list manipulation, higher-order functions, control flow — are pure computation with no platform dependency.")) (~docs/section :title "The primitive contract" :id "primitive-contract" (p :class "text-stone-600" "A platform adapter implements a small interface:") (ul :class "space-y-2 text-stone-600 mt-2" (li (code :class "text-violet-700" "createElement(tag)") " — create a platform widget") (li (code :class "text-violet-700" "createText(str)") " — create a text node") (li (code :class "text-violet-700" "setAttribute(el, key, val)") " — set a property") (li (code :class "text-violet-700" "appendChild(parent, child)") " — attach to tree") (li (code :class "text-violet-700" "addEventListener(el, event, fn)") " — bind interaction") (li (code :class "text-violet-700" "removeChild(parent, child)") " — detach from tree")) (p :class "text-stone-600" "Layout uses a flexbox-like model mapped to native constraint systems. Styling maps a CSS property subset to native appearance APIs. The mapping is lossy but covers the common cases.")) (~docs/section :title "What transfers, what doesn\'t" :id "transfers" (p :class "text-stone-600" "What transfers wholesale: parser, evaluator, all non-DOM primitives, component system (defcomp, defmacro), closures, the component cache, keyword argument handling, list/dict operations.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "What needs replacement: HTML tags become abstract widgets, CSS becomes platform layout, SxEngine fetch/swap/history becomes native navigation, innerHTML/outerHTML have no equivalent.")) (~docs/section :title "Component mapping" :id "component-mapping" (p :class "text-stone-600" "HTML elements map to platform-native widgets:") (div :class "overflow-x-auto mt-4" (table :class "w-full text-sm text-left" (thead (tr :class "border-b border-stone-200" (th :class "py-2 pr-4 font-semibold text-stone-700" "HTML") (th :class "py-2 font-semibold text-stone-700" "Native widget"))) (tbody :class "text-stone-600" (tr :class "border-b border-stone-100" (td :class "py-2 pr-4" "div") (td :class "py-2" "View / Container")) (tr :class "border-b border-stone-100" (td :class "py-2 pr-4" "span / p") (td :class "py-2" "Text / Label")) (tr :class "border-b border-stone-100" (td :class "py-2 pr-4" "button") (td :class "py-2" "Button")) (tr :class "border-b border-stone-100" (td :class "py-2 pr-4" "input") (td :class "py-2" "TextInput / TextField")) (tr :class "border-b border-stone-100" (td :class "py-2 pr-4" "img") (td :class "py-2" "Image / ImageView")) (tr (td :class "py-2 pr-4" "ul / li") (td :class "py-2" "List / ListItem")))))) (~docs/section :title "Prior art" :id "prior-art" (p :class "text-stone-600" "React Native: JavaScript evaluated by Hermes/JSC, commands sent over a bridge to native UI. Lesson: the bridge is the bottleneck. Serialization overhead, async communication, layout thrashing across the boundary.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "Flutter: Dart compiled to native, renders via Skia/Impeller to a canvas. Lesson: owning the renderer avoids platform inconsistencies but sacrifices native feel.") (p :class "text-stone-600" ".NET MAUI, Kotlin Multiplatform: shared logic with platform-native UI. Closest to what SX Native would be.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "sx advantage: the evaluator is tiny (~2,300 lines), the primitive surface is minimal (~50), and s-expressions are trivially portable. No bridge overhead because the evaluator runs in-process.")) (~docs/section :title "Language options" :id "language-options" (p :class "text-stone-600" "The native evaluator needs to be written in a language that compiles everywhere:") (ul :class "space-y-2 text-stone-600 mt-2" (li (strong "Rust") " — compiles to every target, excellent FFI, strong safety guarantees") (li (strong "Zig") " — simpler, C ABI compatibility, good for embedded") (li (strong "Swift") " — native on iOS, good interop with Apple platforms") (li (strong "Kotlin MP") " — Android + iOS + desktop, JVM ecosystem")) (p :class "text-stone-600" "Recommendation: Rust evaluator core with thin Swift and Kotlin adapters for iOS and Android respectively. Rust compiles to WASM (replacing sx.js), native libraries (mobile/desktop), and standalone binaries (CLI/server).")) (~docs/section :title "Incremental path" :id "incremental-path" (p :class "text-stone-600" "This is not an all-or-nothing project. Each step delivers value independently:") (ol :class "space-y-2 text-stone-600 mt-2 list-decimal list-inside" (li "Extract platform-agnostic evaluator from sx.js — clean separation of concerns") (li "Rust port of evaluator — enables WASM, edge workers, embedded") (li "Terminal adapter (ratatui TUI) — simplest platform, fastest iteration cycle") (li "iOS SwiftUI adapter — Rust core via swift-bridge, SwiftUI rendering") (li "Android Compose adapter — Rust core via JNI, Compose rendering") (li "Shared components render identically everywhere"))) (~docs/section :title "The federated angle" :id "federated" (p :class "text-stone-600" "Native sx apps are ActivityPub citizens. They receive activities, evaluate component templates, and render natively. A remote profile, post, or event arrives as an ActivityPub activity. The native app has sx component definitions cached locally. It evaluates the component with the activity data and renders platform-native UI.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "This is the cooperative web vision extended to native platforms. Content and UI travel together as s-expressions. The rendering target — browser, phone, terminal — is an implementation detail.")) (~docs/section :title "Realistic assessment" :id "assessment" (p :class "text-stone-600" "This is a multi-year project. But the architecture is sound because the primitive surface is small.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "Immediate value: a Rust evaluator enables WASM (drop-in replacement for sx.js), edge workers (Cloudflare/Deno), and embedded use cases. This is worth building regardless of whether native mobile ever ships.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "Terminal adapter: weeks of work with ratatui. Useful for CLI tools, server-side dashboards, ssh-accessible interfaces.") (p :class "text-stone-600" "Mobile: 6-12 months of dedicated work for a production-quality adapter. The evaluator is the easy part. Platform integration — navigation, gestures, accessibility, text input — is where the complexity lives."))))
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