Re: [Informa-developer] Suggestions for changes to core

[Jason C. <ja...@ze...>]

Niko Schmuck wrote:

>
>No, those are really two different concepts. CategoryIF is meant 
>for being used to reflect the metadatum about what an item/channel 
>is about (in the sense of the author who contributed the news). 
>While ChannelGroupIF is more related for building up a convenient 
>hierarchy for displaying the channels a user is interested in (and 
>may be switched from user to user perspective), the groups must 
>therefore totally separated from the original channel/item content.
>  
>
Why do we need an object for CategoryIF, if this is just the tag given 
to the item by the author? Wouldn't this be better as just a text field 
with the name of the category given by the author? We aren't going to 
want to re-use catrgories across authors/publishers, are we?

I would also suggest that get/setTitle() be added to ChannelGroupIF, 
since you'll want some way to name the groups, and adding nesting like 
the get/setParent(), getChildren(), and add/removeChild() would be 
valuable for ChannelGroupIF, since you'll want to be able to have 
hierarchical groups of channels (at least I do).

>>2) Why is there an ItemMetaDataIF? Couldn't this just be rolled
>>into ItemIF? Maybe not all readers want it, is all I can think...
>>    
>>
>
>The intention was to obtain a clear separation between a news item 
>intrinsics and metadata about that item. Unfortunately (on the 
>programatic side) the downside is, that it does mean a bit longer 
>code to gather all interesting facts for an item object together.
>If readers don't want to use it, this causes no headache just 
>ignore ItemMetaDataIF (the builder cares about initialisation).
>  
>
Ok, I can see that. The problem is that the ItemMetaData is wired into 
the Item. In a multi-user world, the item meta data is user-specific. 
Different users may have different strategies for scoring items, and 
will definitely want different values for isMarkedRead().

>  
>
>>3) What are the FeedIF and FeedParserIF for? Are they just old
>>versions of ChannelIF and ChannelParserIF?
>>    
>>
>
>No, FeedIF and FeedParserIF are may be not very good names, but 
>those two interfaces are for storing information about a news 
>metadata feed, which may contain information about more than one 
>news channel (like OCS and OPML). Still futuristic, no 
>implementation yet, just ideas ... 
>

Aaahh. Ok. Sorry, didn't catch the intention here.

>>4) Maybe it's just me, but Informa seems too single-user only. I
>>think we need a UserIF, Categories need to be owned by a user,
>>and ChannelBuilderIF needs to create categories, etc. for one
>>user..
>>    
>>
>
>Very good point (to introduce UserIF), while I don't agree that the 
>user should assign categores (see my notes on 1). I have to think 
>more about the implications, though. If you would elaborate more on 
>your multi-user idea, this could defn help.
>  
>
I want to have a (potentially) multi-user app, with different settings 
for each user. Each user can have their own subscriptions, altough the 
app will maintain a single set of all of the channels and items. When a 
user wants to add a channel subscription, they can either choose one of 
the channels already being loaded by the app, or add a new one. When 
users unsubscribe, if no-one else is subscribed, then the channel is 
de-activated.

Each user should also have their own meta-data about channels and items, 
such as the last time the channel was read, the item score and read status.

This doesn't necessarily need to be implemented by adding a UserIF, we 
could use java.security.Principal, or this could be something I 
implement in my own code.

>Hope this helps a bit more to understand the design of the 
>interfaces. Looking forward to hear more of such detailed 
>feedback :-)
>

Here's another one for you. I think the ChannelBuilderIF should be pared 
down to just what the ChannelParser needs, with

ChannelIF makeChannel(String title);
ItemIF makeItem(String title, String description, URL link);
TextInputIF makeTextInput(String title, String description, URL link);

so I can implement the groups  in my own code, without having to 
shoehorn some kind of implementation in a ChannelBuilder and cast all 
the time to get the methods I need. At least, that is, unless we can add 
that other stuff into ChannelGroupIF.

Jason

>
>Cheers,
>Niko
>
>
>
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