Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
On Thu, 18 Oct 2007, Paul Ishenin wrote:
Hello, fpc-developer list.
Some time ago I posted here proposal to extend platform keyword. You gave a
hostile reception to that proposal.
Later Florian in private conversation with me suggested better idea of
property attributes. Indeed, attributes are more general solution than
platform keyword.
Lets discuss this proposal.
What is the purpose: extend rtti (or another structures that can be accessed
at run time) with list of user defined Name=Value items.
How it can be used: since it is generic solution different tools can use it in
their own way. For example in LCL we can use attribute 'widgetset' to define
widgetset specific properties and show such properties on another Tab of
Object Inspector or with different colors (or show hints and so on).
I see no problem with this proposal from a language point of view.
The only problem is the storage. Your 'runtime access'.
I don't think it belongs in the RTTI. RTTI ends up in the binary, and
we get already enough complaints about binary size. A switch to leave
it out is not really a good solution, it shouldn't be in there in the
first place (apart from the technical feasability)
Also, the only place where this extended information is useful, is in
the Lazarus IDE (or any other IDE) Therefor I propose to simply write
it to the .ppu file, or - like the resource strings - to a separate file:
one per unit. (a .ppi file: "pascal property information").
Ok, no problem - lets it be ppu. We only need some way of accessing that
data. Is ppu reading methods already exists in RTL or another fpc package?
Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.
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