RE: [Bojangles-devel] dynamic widgets

[Wesley W. <ka...@om...>]

Just a preliminary thought...
Shouldn't the page widget be auto-added in bojangles? Every application
will need one, and I don't think we can import xml into other xml (which
would be cool), all apps will need to be edited as a whole (so every app
will have a page widget that encompasses everything else.

And now thoughts ordered by the questions from Nathan:

From this line of thinking, why do we even need a max_per_document for
anything other than a page?

I think the default size of a widget would be something that centrallix
could use as well. So adding that to the widget.xml would makes sense
(IMHO).

As far as other things that would be bojangles-specific, like border
status and such, I like the idea of a widget_definitions directory with
XML files defining this sort of thing.

I think the bgcolor is something that (again) centrallix could use as
well for lazy app designers that want to just create default-colored
widgets and don't want to mess with making things fancy (the same can be
said for imagebuttons). 

In summation, I think we should put some default properties in the
widget.xml file as a prevenitive measure against someone hand-coding an
app file and forgetting a property or two. However, since html nativly
knows what to do with buttons, imagebuttons, checkboxes, and
textboxes/areas. I think we should keep these definitions to ourselves
(actually I see this as the only thing we would need to keep separate
from centrallix).

----
---Wesley Widner
--
-


-----Original Message-----
From: boj...@li...
[mailto:boj...@li...] On Behalf Of Nathan
Ehresman
Sent: Saturday, August 24, 2002 11:29 PM
To: boj...@li...
Subject: [Bojangles-devel] dynamic widgets

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