Yeah. Improving documentation is very high on our to-do list. We will
be focusing on it post-1.3, and trying to really solidify it for 1.3.1.
On Aug 18, 2009, at 8:04 PM, Scott Lanham wrote:
Thanks Greg,
If the general description for each component in the API
documentation states
how it expects child components to be added it will certainly make
things
easier to work with :-)
On Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:54:42 am Greg Brown wrote:
Great question. Many containers define a property or set of
properties
that clearly express the subcomponents that a caller is allowed to
manipulate. If no such properties are defined, then it is safe to
simply add components directly to the container itself.
Some examples:
- Window, Border, and Expander define a "content" component
- TablePane defines row and column sequences
- ScrollPane defines "view", "rowHeader", "columnHeader", and
"corner"
component
- TabPane defines a "tabs" component sequence and a "corner"
component
- Accordion defines a "panels" component sequence
- Rollup defines "heading" and "content" components
There are only a handful of containers that *don't* actually fall
into
this category. I think it is only FlowPane, BoxPane, and CardPane.
The main reason for this is to allow a container skin to add (and lay
out) other components as necessary to achieve the desired UI (for
example, TerraTabPaneSkin adds tab buttons, TerraAccordionSkin adds
header buttons, etc.). Those components are then never directly
exposed to the caller via the container's API. However, it is also
useful in other cases - for example, TablePane uses its column and
row
sequences to establish the structure of its component grid.
So, it's largely a documentation issue. But I can definitely see it
causing some initial confusion.
Hope this helps.
G
On Aug 18, 2009, at 6:58 PM, Scott Lanham wrote:
Hi Guys,
Sometimes there is a content property for a component and sometimes
the child
components are just listed under the definition of the object like
with
BoxPane.
Can you give me some clues please as to when to expect a content
property and
when not to?
Thanks,
Scott.
