I'm getting strange out-of-order mails from the list now (saw this one
day old mail after I send my own on the same topic three hours ago),
but I presume that might be sorted out by now.
On 4/22/07, David Huynh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've added support for arbitrary expressions in facets, and it looks
> like that's working in your hotel exhibit... This is opening up a few
> other doors, given that certain functions are added, e.g.,
>
> - a facet of first letters of names, serving as an alphabetic directory
> index.
> - a facet of area codes of phone numbers.
> - a facet of century names ("15th century) generated from raw dates.
> - a facet that categorizes people into infant/toddler/teenager/adult by
> mapping their ages, computed with date-range(.birthday, now, "year")
>
> Of course, there has been an argument that such dependent properties
> should be explicitly expressed in the data rather than computed on the
> fly. But that variable "now" could be a good counter-argument.
I think the argument was not against computed data per se, but against
not having the option of embedding the computation as a property of
the data set itself, but hiding it in the presentational framework.
It's a very valid concern, though unfortunately one we haven't found
good solutions for yet. But we have to leave some opportunities for
future research too, right? ;-)
At least no pleasant tractable idea comes to mind for me when I ponder
it; expressing code as data really only ever worked nicely in the LISP
world, IMO, where the two are largely the same thing.
--
/ Johan Sundström, http://ecmanaut.blogspot.com/
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