At 11:02 AM 5/29/01 -0400, Robert Landrum wrote:
>At 9:53 PM +0800 5/29/01, Gunther Birznieks wrote:
>>At 05:17 PM 5/28/01 -0400, Stephen Adkins wrote:
>>> >
>>>>I don't understand the Widget::Controller. Can you say more about this?
>>>>
>>>>Also will we require XML to configure? Or is this also an optional feature
>>>>that you more or less want for yourself but others can choose to not use?
>>>
>>>Hi,
>>>
>>>Below is running code for the Perl Widget Library.
>>>So far, there are only two widgets.
>>>
>>>* a generic Widget::HTML::Element
>>>* a drop-down menu Widget::HTML::Select
>>>
>>>Are there early comments on the interface from Perl?
>>>Is this shaping up into what was desired?
>>>
>>>Stephen
>>>
>>>shark:/usr/ov/acoc/dev/src/Widget/examples> more Widget.xml Widget.2
>>>::::::::::::::
>>>Widget.xml
>>>::::::::::::::
>>><config>
>>><widget name="first_name" tag='input' type='text' size='14'
>>>maxlength='99'/>
>>><widget name="last_name" widget-class='Widget::HTML::Element'
>>>tag='input' type='text' size='14' maxlength='99'/>
>>><widget name="birth_dt" widget-type='date'/>
>>><widget name="sex" widget-type='sex'/>
>>><widget-type name="date" tag='input' type='text' size='14' maxlength='99'/>
>>><widget-type name="sex" widget-class='Widget::HTML::Select' domain='sex'/>
>>><domain name="sex">
>>> <item name="M" label="Male"/>
>>> <item name="F" label="Female"/>
>>></domain>
>>></config>
>>
>>This config seems simple enough that it doesn't seem that necessary to
>>use XML.
>
>Yes, but that's only because it defines 4 widgets... I'd probably expect
>somewhere between 50-100 widgets on average, and more the 500 in extreme cases.
Really? I think you are an extreme case then. Do you really have more than
50 form elements on a page usually? I think the container of the widgets is
roughly equivalent to a page that has to be rendered. It isn't necessarily
every widget in the entire app.
>A perl hashref config file requires knowledge of perl data structures,
>which most designers won't grasp. Since I'm not the designer for my site,
>nor am I the guy
This is true.
>developing the underlying data structure, I wouldn't feel comfortable
>using perl as the config file. XML makes for a nice, easily understood
>medium for communicating configuration directives.
Yes, but nice as an option. The worst part about an XML Config file is
everyone will have differences of opinion about what to XMLify and how
complex to make the defaults. So I think it's best as noted before, to
leave as a subclass.
>>print "First Name: ", $widget->display(), "\n";
>>Since widgets are components that know how to display themselves whether
>>its WML or HTML or whatever.
>
>What about draw? display might be misinterpreted. If I draw something,
>does that mean I've displayed it? Under the Xwindow system, widgets are
>drawn and then shown, IIRC...
>
>print "First Name: ", $widget->draw(),"\n";
I think this is a very good interface.
