Thanks for the feedback, Bob. I was trying to get a feature into the
product; I have no objection to it coming in in you (better) way
>1.) Location of the components is defined with in the Xal document.
Yes; the use-case for this means that a designer puts the elements with
the requisite i.d.s into each new page
>2.) Location of the components is defined in the HTML page.
>A
I think we should just use the i.d. instead of the actual element,
although that limits
us to elements with i.d.s.
>B.) Specify with in the HTML applications or components to include in
the Application. The best case scenario would be to allow developers to
include xal components directly within the html document as follows.
What you're proposing (our tags in a xal: namespace within
otherwise-html documents) has the disadvantage that it can't be used
with standard html editors.
This (if I understand it correctly), only speaks to having an entire
application within a single HTML element. (use-case 3.)
For the "scattered components" case:
I have another proposal, essentially a stylesheet: a third file which
would map components with xal i.d.s to their destination DOMs:
<!-- A xap application that allows you to pick a function in one widget,
and display it in another.-->
<xal...>
[...]
<graphableFunctionDesigner id="theFunctionPicker"/>
<functionDisplayer id="theDisplayer"/>
[...]
</xal>
...then the HTML...
<!-- HTML for the function chooser and the graph it will display: -->
<script language="JavaScript">
Xap.useHtmlDomMapper("functionPlayground.xml") ;
</script>
<body>
<table width="400px" height="400px"
style="background-color:grey">
<tr><th colspan="2">Pick a function at the bottom, see
it at the top:</th></tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<div id="graphHost" width="100%"
height="100%" style="background-color:white"/>
</td>
</tr>
<!-- Some large number of rows -->
<tr>
<td>Pick a function:</td><td
id="functionPickerHost"/>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
...and their connection via...
functionPlayground.xml:
======================
<!-- A mapping file showing where the components will display: -->
<xal-to-html-document>
<xal-display:embed xapId="theFunctionPicker"
htmlDomId="functionPickerHost"/>
<xal-display:embed xapId="theDisplayer" id="graphHost"/>
</xal-to-html-document>
I'm afraid I like this one a lot: it's extremely flexible because it
means that different xap applications could be displayed using the same
(except one line specifying the mapper) html document and vice versa.
It allows designers to play with plain html, and it could be extensible
to other UI systems with identifiable elements.
(For the html case, it could be implemented via an XSLT transform, I
think, though maybe we wouldn't want to.)
