[Jsynthlib-devel] Proposal: DeviceDescriptor

[Joe E. <jo...@em...>]

I'm done with the initial work on turning the DeviceAddDialog JList into 
a JTree. Now, I'm just working on the parts that group the tree in 
various ways (ie, first by manufacturer and then by type, by 
manufacturer only, by type only, etc). I'm also considering making it 
possible to add multiple synths with a single instance of the dialog.

Anyway, my current work forced me to go into DevicesConfig an clean 
things up. While I was there, I decided to keep track of devices with a 
class I named "DeviceDescriptor". It's merely a data-holding class which 
keeps DeviceName, ShortName, IDString, Manufacturer, Type, and ClassName 
all together. Then, I'm able to just maintain a list of all of the 
descriptors.

Right now, DeviceDescriptor is only used by a few classes that I'm 
working on... but I'd like to expand it. The reason is that 
DevicesConfig has a handful of methods like "getClassNameForDeviceName", 
"getShortNameForDeviceName", "getIDStringForDeviceName", and then there 
are more for "getXxxByIDString" or "getXxxByClassName".

What I'd *like* to do is just have "getDescriptorForDeviceName", 
"getDescriptorForClassName", etc. and then the *calling* method gets the 
whole descriptor and can get whatever data elements it wants out of 
that. This will require me to go modify some classes that are currently 
outside the scope of my development on DeviceAddDialog. They're small 
changes, but I wanted to check to see if anyone had any objections first.

Ultimately, I think it would make for cleaner design if DeviceDescriptor 
got more widely used, too. Ultimately, it would be nice if this was how 
synthdrivers reported what devices they can interact with. This way, a 
single Device class could offer back an array of DeviceDescriptors for 
various synths that it knew how to control. Of course, that would be 
down the road a ways.... but I just wanted to put that in your heads.

- Joe