[Sheets-devel] A big Sheets idea

[Aaron P. <ap...@cm...>]

Here's an idea I've been thinking about for a while.

One problem with using sheets with other developers is that we Sheets 
developers really want to use Sheets dump files, because it's such a 
rich format -- it saves all the hierarchies of files, fragments, etc., 
puts in separators, and all sorts of neat stuff.  But other developers 
who don't use sheets just won't develop on a project at all if we use 
dump files as our official, CVS-checked-in format*.  One argument to use 
dump files anyway is that would encourage more developers to switch to 
sheets.  But that's a Microsoft-monopoly argument -- there's so many 
development environments and some programmers are so entrenched, they 
really won't want to switch.

So what if we make sheets work well without dump files?  There's a way 
to do this -- here's a couple tricks:
1) Get rid of the exports list for a class and export in the order users 
have organized their fragments.
2) Turn separators into /* 
---------------------------------------------------------- */ and parse 
them back out into separators when they come back in
3) Use comments to show where fragments go in the hierarchy of sheets -- 
at the beginning of a fragment, show a /* This Method's hierarchy: 
Project Sheets -> Util Package -> CollectionUtils -> Collection Utils 
Mouse Listener Stuff */
(I only made up the last sheet name -- otherwise it's a real hierarchy)
This makes it human-readable and I think it has all the info that's in 
Sheets dump files.
There's also a bug you mentioned with dump files that CVS and diffs 
eventually work poorly on large ones -- I dunno if you fixed that, but 
it wouldn't be a problem if something like this happened.  Of course, 
CVS merges would be harder because people can move methods around, but 
that's just where CVS starts failing, not Sheets.

I think this might be the way Sheets should evolve.  Of course, it's a 
tremendously large leap and requires a ton of changes to the code.

* Of course, sheets dump files are just fine for the Sheets repository 
where people are working on sheets
 
 - Aaron