Re: [Adobe-source-devel] visual eve editor

[Sean P. <sp...@ad...>]

I have some thoughts - Foster may have some also - he implemented the  
original Expresso -

* The basic UI that I envision is a two view editor - a tree view  
showing the UI elements and a preview.

The tree view should be fairly simple - showing an icon for the view  
type and the name property (after localize is executed) for the item  
- if no name property then the view type is displayed

[] My Dialog
  -- row
    () OK
    () Cancel

* Drag and drop (including multiple items) - should be allowed within  
the tree view as well as between the tree view and preview windows.

* The preview window should be live - meaning you can select elements  
directly in it and drag items around. Items can be dropped into  
containers (containers should highlight to show you where the item  
will be dropped.

* An inspector palette should be present to show you the properties  
of the view selected. I would only show the editable properties and  
possibly organize them into panels - you might want a debugging  
palette or panel which shows the calculated properties. This palette  
should be fairly easy to create with Eve (and Adam) - I've been  
meaning to construct this part with the current system just to show  
the properties of each of the widgets types.

     * Shortcuts for typical properties should be provided - ctrl- 
[ - ] for align left, center, right, etc...

* A palette of the available widgets that can be dropped onto either  
the tree view or the preview would be great.

* Within the inspector palette I would allow expressions - not just  
values - for the properties.

* From an implementation standpoint - the Eve (and Adam) languages  
have been designed to support roundtrip editing - this is why the  
comments are in the syntax - so they can be associated with  
particular elements and carried through an editor. The way to build  
such a beast is to replace the eve_evaluate file that captures the  
information from the parser and populate a structure for the editor  
(possibly using the forest library).

* One implementation hole that I know of at the moment is that there  
is no way way to erase an item from a layout - but I believe that  
could be easily added.

* Bonus points for a live source view
* Double bonus points for alternative syntaxes (especially an XML  
based one)
* Triple bonus points for a property model view (a table of cells and  
expressions) - and drag-drop to connect
* 50 bonus points for a property model visualizer (likely using GrafViz)





On Dec 9, 2006, at 9:18 PM, Ralph Thomas wrote:

> Hi list,
>
>   I plan to implement a few features in my app that would benefit from
> having some kind of visual eve editor library (I want to use Eve to do
> page layout for printing photos, and for DVD menu layout). In the ASL
> Overview there is reference to a "Expresso2" visual editor -- I was
> wondering if you had any plans on how to implement the app?
>
>   Obviously it would be great if I could write a library that could be
> used by my app and by Expresso2 (or other Eve visual editor tools).
>
> Ralph
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ---
> Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT
> Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to  
> share your
> opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys - and earn cash
> http://www.techsay.com/default.php? 
> page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV
> _______________________________________________
> Adobe-source-devel mailing list
> Ado...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/adobe-source-devel