Re: [Jsynthlib-devel] XML Library format (was: Roland MT32 files ready ...)

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

Joachim Backhaus wrote:

>>1 - There are attribute values named "author" and "date". This is what
>>they are called in core.Patch. However, in the LibraryFrame, they were
>>apparently changed at some point to "Field1" and "Field2". 
>>    
>>
>hmm, maybe we should change core.Patch because sooner or later
>this will lead to confusions.
>
>I haven't looked deeper, but as far as I can see changing
>this and the corresponding getter and setter methods to
>"field1" and "field2" should be relatively easy with Eclipse.
>  
>
Well, the problem hasn't been the effort in changing the Patch class. 
That's easy. The problem (as I understand it) has been that, if you 
change the data elements of Patch at all, it will no longer work with 
older serialized objects (as in... all .patchlib files).

>So to avoid confusion I suggest to re-name "author" "field1"
>and "date" "field2" in the XML format.
>If real "author" and "date" fields are required later,
>we can easily add them.
>  
>
Well, I have a problem with using "Field1" and "Field2" at all. Being 
generic, they're obviously not used by JSL for anything useful... which 
means that they're only of use to the user. The only thing I can imagine 
the *user* using them for is for additional comment fields. So, we can 
handle this one of two ways. We could either just have the user put all 
comments in the *existing* comment field and we can eliminate Field1 and 
Field2 altogether, or we can allow the user to create as many additional 
user-defined fields as they want (which could lead to problems).

My vote is to eliminate Field1 and Field2 entirely. The XML file will 
then only have comments and sysex data, but that's all we really need, I 
guess.

- Joe