Re: [pclasses-devel] some ideas for expanding P

[stephan b. <st...@s1...>]

On Monday 20 December 2004 12:52, Christian Prochnow wrote:
> >   proc.start(...); // some flags might not be possible/appropriate
> >   ProcessIO * io = proc.processIO();
> >
> > Maybe that already works? If so, please point me in the proper
> > direction.
>
> This should already work. Have a look into  'demo/process.cpp'.

Excellent :).

> > - Add support similar to s11n's acme::argv_parser class. This
> > allows all client apps to read the args passed in to main(), but
...
> > me.
>
> Would you like to implement argv parsing into the experimental code
> base?

Absolutely. i've got a bare-bones argv parser i've been using for 2+ 
years, which i could easily pull in. Once you've got the new CVS set up 
i'll start dumping code in :).

>
> For accessing process environment, a simple ProcessEnv class exists.

Oh, great! That'll do!

> > - Add an optional module for reading input from the console, using
...
>
> UI things (text and graphical), until now, we're not important for
> us. I used the framework for programming server software for a Bank
> in Berlin, Germany. Only UI that the server software got, was a
> telnet interface ;-)

LOL! i agree that UI is extremely low priority. My own ideas about it 
are more for experimentation and the joy of hacking, not because i 
really want to implement a full UI-neutral UI.

> However, this should change and i would like to see an
> Toolkit-independent, plugin-based GUI infrastructure for P.

i've been tinkering, on paper, with this idea for a year or two, as 
well.

Tasks which i'd like to sign up for regarding P:

- Adding API docs. i'm pedantic about API documentation, and would like 
to start filling out the P API docs.

- argv parser.

- serialization support for the P classes which can reasonably support 
serialization. The ground-work is essentially done, now it's time to 
add save/load support for specific P types. e.g., i'd like to be able 
to save a ResultSet (though restoring it to an actual ResultSet isn't 
feasible, i think, because of db connection persistency issues).

- Fix up mysql driver to support text/blob fields (using fix posted this 
weekend).

- Writing a lib manual. As you may have noticed, i like to write (s11n's 
lib manual is now 67 pages, not including API docs), and i think P has 
a lot of good things to write about.

- Fix up some of the abort()-calling code (throwing undeclared 
exceptions or simply calling 'throw' will do this). i submitted a bug 
or two to SF today for URL to fix 2 of these.


Please let me know when your dev tree is online so i can start hacking 
away :). The P toolkit has a fantastic set of classes, and they need 
some evangelism and love! You've got regex classes :) but i only found 
them by accident (they don't show up on all the doxygen-generated 
pages, and there is no demo app for them).

Take care,

-- 
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"...pleasure is a grace and is not obedient to the commands
of the will." -- Alan W. Watts