Obviously, I'm a little biased, because I did the rich text area work :-), but I think there is a lot of value in continuing to support the current rich text editor component.
However, I really like what you are proposing. It sounds a lot like the Eclipse Forms project, http://www.eclipse.org/articles/Article-Forms/article.html which was designed to make text/form/html type layout designs much easier to achieve. I suggest we rename TextArea to RichTextArea or StyledTextArea. I don't have an really good suggestions for the new layout component. FormPane would conflict with our current Form class, TextPane sounds too much like something text-specific, FormLayoutPane? TextLayoutPane? PagePane? Just throwing ideas out there. Greg Brown wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm about ready to check in final support for the new TextArea. There are > still a few bugs to work out, but it is mostly functional. > > I'd like to raise the question again of what to call the new "rich text > area". I'm still pretty excited about the concept of a "TextPane" component - > this would be a container whose primary purpose is to support text-based > layouts that aren't easily achievable (or even possible) using some of our > other layout containers. For example, designers of complex text-based forms > could really benefit from such a component. > > The existing (rich) TextArea class can certainly be used for this purpose, > but it currently has a lot of baggage since it supports editing. A pure "text > pane" wouldn't need such support, so it would significantly simplify the > codebase if we were to eliminate it. > > I think there may be a lot more long-term value in a "TextPane" class than a > "RichTextArea" component. It would also be a lot easier to maintain (which is > a very valid concern in a volunteer-driven effort like Pivot). > > We don't necessarily need to decide right now, but I'm thinking that > "TextPane" might be a more appropriate name for this component either way. It > also has a bit more parity with the "org.apache.pivot.wtk.text" package, and > the view classes, which currently live in org.apache.pivot.wtk.skin, could be > moved to org.apache.pivot.wtk.skin.text. > > Let me know what you think. > > G >
