With all the talk recently about modifying the Class Designer to
handle code separation, I realized that one of the main reasons for
my resisting this is because I feel like I have a ton of stuff on my
plate, and very little time to get it done. Adding another thing to
test and integrate, even if someone else wrote the code, when that
wasn't moving us closer to established goals, just seemed counter-
productive.
So I'd like to let you all know what I'm working on, and if you'd
like to help, please let me know.
• Localization: we need someone with solid localization experience
with whom to collaborate on the proper way to add localization to the
framework. We also need translators, as well as the tools to automate
this. The basic guts of the localized string extraction from the
framework code is complete and working; I plan on creating the tools,
but first we need to get the whole gettext() file requirements
settled so that the tools can put the files in the correct places.
• Preferences: I'm working on this now, and need feedback/input on
the implementation. Perhaps some examples of the sorts of
preferences you envision for your apps, as opposed to the internal
framework stuff, would be useful to make sure that the design is
flexible enough to handle all of them.
• Editor: we need better namespace resolution in Intellisense. It's
silly that typing 'self.Form.' brings up the atts of the Form
property, instead of the atts of the form itself. If anyone wants to
look into this, I'm willing to help any way I can. Also, we could use
some ideas on how to limit the list of atts/methods/properties to
Dabo-specific ones instead of everything, especially the wx-specific
ones. I'm not sure that a reliance on capitalization patterns is
best, since I've noticed that many Dabo users write code that looks
more like wxPython than Dabo, and their custom stuff should show up,
too.
• Documentation: While I've made some progress, we need a ton more. I
believe that exhaustive documentation, in which every single aspect
of the framework is documented, is almost as bad as no docs at all.
What would really help is to explain what sort of help you were
looking for and couldn't find. Chances are that the documentation
doesn't exist, or exists in a place that isn't obvious. If you let me
know what's confusing, or what's lacking, that will be the place for
me to focus on.
• Connectivity: I'd really like to get VFP connectivity done soon, if
only to be able to show Dabo working with Fox data when I speak at
the FoxForward conference in September. Since there are no VFP ODBC
drivers on platforms other than Windows, the only solutions I've
found are ODBC bridges that run a server ODBC on the machine
containing the data (and the VFP driver), and a client ODBC that
talks to the server. All such solutions I've found cost about $1000
to start, and contain strict licensing. So if anyone knows of any
other platform-independent way of talking to Fox data, that would be
great. I'd also like to get SQL Server and Oracle implemented, but
since no one is pushing for those right now, it would be difficult to
get any sort of testing done with them.
• IDE: I've only started playing with PyAUI (<http://xoomer.alice.it/
infinity77/eng/PyAUI.html>), which seems like what we would need for
the interface. We need to spec out exactly what a project consists
of, and how to best manage these pieces. We need to write the missing
parts (bizobj editor, project manager, debugger) and integrate the
existing tools.
Paul, if you're working on anything, it might help to let everyone
know what that is, and where you could use some help.
-- Ed Leafe
-- http://leafe.com
-- http://dabodev.com
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