Re: [Tm4j-developers] Some news and an idea

[Norbert H. <rue...@se...>]

Hi,

first of all I have to mention that it is not my favourite to
develop GUI programs :) But in lack of having one I decided
to build one. And I would like to participate in the GUI
development.
> 
> That sounds good to me - I was going to suggest that seeing as there seem to
> be a number of people interested in developing this application that it
> would be a good thing to:
> 
> a) Split the work up

yes, i think everyone agrees with you. Should we build a detailed
wishlist to start over?

> b) Develop the editor as a "framework" into which new GUI tools or
> processing tools can be easily slotted.
>

that sounds really nice. Building the GUI Widget upon the Objects they
are editing it should be easy to include them in a framework. We need
some structure of distributing single aspects of a map through such
a framework. I'm very interested in doing such but I don't know enough
about topic maps and GUIs (as I mentioned last time).


> In looking at (b) I think it would be very worthwhile spending some time
> working out an MVC-style architecture for the application. The model part
> can probably be mostly provided by the existing TopicMap/TopicMapProvider
> interfaces, however it may need some extension to support all of the
> features required of the editing application. The View and Controller parts
> could draw on some of the "events" in the current version of TMNav, though
> I'm not entirely happy with the structure of that application.
>
Could you explain how you think MVC takes place in the application. As 
long as
we need widgets for topic map objects the widgets will rely heavily on
using the topic map API. Thus preventing to some extend the use of MVC.

> Norbert, would it be possible for you to describe the architecture of your
> application a little. Existing applications such as yours and the TMNav
> application are good starting points for working out a feasible architecture
> for this kind of thing.
> 
I wouldn't call it application right now :)
I started to figure out what common functionality could form a topic editing
panel. With comfortable editing in mind I built up three widgets to
contruct the panel for a topic.

1.) BaseName and Occurrence. Holding a list of objects. Creation is done
     from String (textfield input). The creation of those objects is done
     via a factory which is set up in the widget.
     -> Constructor(Factory)
2.) Occurrence type. Selection of a single Object from a predefined list.
3.) BaseName scope, Occurrence Scope, Topic types. Selection of multiple
     objects from a predefined list.

2.)+3.)

The selection capabilities are those of a JList. Additional I work with an
extended ListModel which has search capabilities. This enables the user
to type in the item he is looking for and the widget autocompletes it.

With the use of a Factory for 1.) and own ListModels and CellRenderers
for 2.) and 3.) the widgets themself are independent from the tm4j API.

Out of these widgets the topic editing panel is constructed.

Distribution of the topic map and duplicate Method are collected in a
own class which is itself a Singleton. I don't like the idea but I
didn't want to make things overcomplicated for me. I will change that
soon.

Editing an object is really like Kals way in TMNav. There are some
methods to duplicate topic map objects which then are used in the
widget for editing. In my opinion this should be a generalized
functionality in or beside the API (util?).


It is not much code right now (widgets: 1445 lines, editor 1094 lines).
I will do more work to have a quite working panel for creation/editing
of topics and associations.
In the meantime we could fix some requirements for the GUI.

> And we need a name. Suggestions anyone ? :-)

A really fascinating name would be: *tata* TMEdit *rotfl*


NoB