Sylvain Wallez wrote:
Marc Portier wrote:
<snip />
I'm very sensible to these signs, because they show the subconscious understanding of a concept, which is often more accurate that the conscious one which has gone through many filters. An example of this is when you often make the same typo for a method or attribute name: this is a sign that the name is badly chosen and that it should be changed.
makes sense, and you know I share your concern there
Now what Form shares with widgets is getWidget() (and not getParent(), since it has intrinsically no parent) and generateSAXFragment, and provides many more methods. So I'm not sure that a form *is* a widget. It's rather more a kind of "widget tree processor".
hence your almost side-wise comment on the 'name-change' ?
I have to say this is a bit funny: we just voted to rename 'woody' to 'cocoon forms' and now we are dicussing the remove the only reference still in the code to the actual 'FORM' word :-)
No no! We are in the process of distinguishing the root widget (the Form) and the object that processes this root widget and its children.
yep, I got to understand that somewhere down the line ;-)
<snip/>
well, reading it all together: maybe we have indeed a WidgetTreeProcessor (although it can be FormProcessor, no?) and we could at least call the method getForm() to get a hold of that 'root-composite-widget?'
what I try to say is that I think I understand that the 'Form' as is coded now doesn't really qualify for the term 'widget'
so the consensus is maybe in understanding that
1/ a Form _is_ a Widget (as in the root-of-the-tree)
2/ the current Form should be renamed since it isn't fitting the bill any more
(BTW I don't like FormProcessor either, haven't got a decent alternative though)
That's the idea. Furthermore, we can consider that the FormProcessor is a controller-only object and that the top-level Form widget is the object that is passed to the view. This distinction may also allow to have several forms in a page by having a single FormProcessor manage several root widgets?
OTOH, we also have to consider that many widgets (e.g. Field) reference their form to e.g. throw events. If we split Form, does Field have to know Form or FormProcessor? Event handling seems more to be the FormProcessor's responsibility, but having the widgets knowing the processor doesn't seem good to me.
why would event handling be the realm of the formprocessor?
as I see it, events are thrown by observables to observers when their state changes in a predefined way... taking this view the widgets and their root seem more appropriate to be the sources of these events (since it's their state?) then the processor, no?
but maybe I'm missing something here?
Well, well...
<snip more_agreement="on binding being an intrinsic aspect of widgets" />
euh, is it just a feeling or am I really at the very spot you manouvered me to? ;-)
Manoeuvring? Nope, I'm just explaining my own thoughts and doubts, and you happen to share them!
as most of the times in fact (but you did notice my smiley, right?)
But it seems that even splitting Form into processor and root widget may answer some of the current concerns, it is very likely to bring other ones. So let's keep it as is now.
have to admit I haven't got much spare do-time ATM to take it up, but stopping thoughts is something I can't do...
regards, -marc= -- Marc Portier http://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java & XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog at http://radio.weblogs.com/0116284/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
