[Pythoncard-devel] Name constraints on components.

[Alex T. <al...@tw...>]

Currently we say that a component name "must start with a letter and 
contain only letters and numbers"

As far as I know this is only checked in the resource editor, and was 
only done to ensure that the component events could be identified 
readily (e.g on_ followed by name followed by _eventtype )

Neither of those matter if you have an app which creates its components 
dynamically, and doesn't depend on name-based event binding (i.e.it 
doesn't use events at all, or uses commands, or catch-all events, or 
wxPython events).

So,

1. is there anything else I've forgotten about that would break ?

2. do you think anyone is using this already ?

3. could (should) we reserve some such names ?

Specifically, I'm thinking about generalizing the sizing handles in the 
resource editor. Currently it knows there is exactly one set of sizing 
handles, and reserves component slots 0:7 for them (and simply reserves 
the names of them). If we are to select multiple components, it's 
probably easier to use a name convention for sizing handles than it is 
to keep track of the number of selected components and manipulate the 
component order accordingly. Therefore, I'd like to have a large number 
of "reserved" names which couldn't clash with users' component names.

I was considering reserving all component names beginning with "_" for 
system use - and specifically "_sh_" for the sizing handles.  What do 
you think ?

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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