[Bojangles-devel] dynamic widgets

[Nathan E. <neh...@cs...>]

hey guys,

i was working on getting bojangles to work with widgets.xml from
centrallix-doc.  i'm running into more and more issues with dynamic widgets
and want to hash some of this out on the list.  the problem i'm running into
is that i need all kinds of data about each widget that maybe shouldn't go
into centrallix's widgets.xml.  things like this:

- max_per_document - how many of this widget can be in an application
(example: widget/page should only be 1)
- width and height for widgets like the checkbox where it isn't a centrallix
property but is needed by the ide for drawing purposes
- speaking of drawing purposes, another thing is how each widget presents
itself to the IDE.  for example, textbuttons should have a raised border,
edit boxes should be lowered, imagebuttons should be able to display the
image, that kind of thing.
- what does a particular property mean (like bgcolor -- call setBackground
method on widget).

i'm not sure that all this kind of stuff should be going into centrallix for
bojangles' use only.

here's my current line of thinking:  what if we would have subclasses of the
Widget class to handle things such as the widget's visual representation in
bojangles and use the widgets.xml def to handle properties and individual
property types, etc.?  this does mean the widgets in bojangles need to be
synced with those in centrallix when new ones are added, but leaves the us
with the dynamic property list functionality.

what do you guys think?  bad idea?  good idea?  i like 100% dynamic, but we
just can't be 100% dynamic without adding all kinds of crazy stuff to
widgets.xml for handling drawing in bojangles that i can see.

other ideas?

nre