--- Jeremias Maerki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm currently playing around with external-graphic > and > instream-foreign-object as you may have seen. It's > my attempt to dive > into the whole layout engine thing. >
Yes, I was very surprised and happy to see you working in layout! > I realize that there are a lot of similarities (and > redundancy) between > the two classes (and even their LM counterparts). I > wonder if I should > create a common (abstract) base class for the two. They are similar enough that that would be an acceptable design. We already do the same with fo:static-content and fo:flow (more or less suggested by the spec, which IIRC declares them both flows), and the region classes. > Is there anything > that speaks against that other than it may be > appropriate to check for > additional refactoring possibilities? Yes, be careful that the decision is not just based on coincidentally common functionality. They should be closely similar objects. (Also too many classes, even if reduced LOC in each as a result, can make FOP seem larger and more complex than it actually is, which can intimidate newbies.) For a silly example, if both class Teacher and class AlpsMountain happen to have a "getLocation()" method, it wouldn't necessarily follow that we should have an abstract TeacherOrAlpsMountain base class. OTOH, class Teacher, class Policeman should probably extend a common abstract class Worker. The recommendation does not declare any relationship between instream-foreign-object and external-graphic, other than that they are both formatting objects. This two-tier hierarchy is already present in FOP, as we have them both extend FObj. But, again, they are close enough that an abstract base class may not be such a bad idea. Glen
