[Chandler-dev] It's 'about' time to deal with redirections...

[Brian Kirsch]

Ok,
Sounds good. Glad to see that we are on the right track in regards to  
i18n.


-Brian

On Oct 31, 2006, at 2:45 PM, Grant Baillie wrote:

> Hi, Brian
>
> I think Bryan's point is that we remove displayName from Item, as  
> well as the repository API (getItemDisplayName()) that uses it.  
> You're right that having a generic and occasionally localized  
> attribute like that doesn't work.
>
> ContentItem will have displayName, but it's the user-settable  
> attribute (like email subject, etc) that you are calling 'title'.  
> Bryan wants to call it 'displayName', because that will fit well  
> with 'displayDate' and 'displayWho' : they're all the values that  
> are displayed in the summary table.
>
> --Grant
>
> On 31 Oct, 2006, at 16:35, Brian Kirsch wrote:
>
>> Hi Bryan,
>> There has been much talk over the .7 release of removing  
>> displayName all together.
>>
>> The ambigious nature of the displayName makes it less than ideal  
>> for localization.
>>
>> Since all items have a displayName attribute, it becomes difficult  
>> to determine which displayNames appear in the UI and thus need  
>> translation.
>>
>> John Anderson was looking in to removing all displayNames from the  
>> Chandler code base
>> at one point.
>>
>> The proposal was to use an alternate attribute such as title for  
>> localized displayable values.
>>
>> I have been off working on Mail and have not given the displayName  
>> issue much thought as of late.
>>
>> Perhaps now is a good time to re-raise the discussion.
>>
>> -Brian
>>
>> On Oct 31, 2006, at 2:16 PM, Bryan Stearns wrote:
>>
>>> The time has come to deal with a couple of issues around  
>>> attribute redirection:
>>>
>>> - We need to index 'who' and 'about' attributes for the  
>>> dashboard, but (a) the repository can't index an attribute that's  
>>> the _source_ of a redirection (the index gets out-of-date really  
>>> quickly, leading to several of my alpha5 bugs), and (b) for  
>>> 'who', a static redirection isn't good enough because the 'who'  
>>> value needs to be determined on a per-item (not per-subclass or  
>>> per-annotation) basis.
>>>
>>> - A related issue is that we're trying to get rid of the  
>>> dependence on the repository's generic 'displayName' mechanism on  
>>> Item; currently, 'about' redirects to 'displayName' by default  
>>> (in ContentItem), but is overridden in several Item subclasses  
>>> and Annotation classes.
>>>
>>> We currently have a mechanism for the Date column that works like  
>>> this:
>>> - ContentItem has a 'relevantDate' attribute that is indexed and  
>>> displayed in the Date column of the dashboard view. There's also  
>>> a 'relevantDateSource' attribute that's currently used to display  
>>> the source of the selected item's Date value (though it's  
>>> currently not localized).
>>> - Items (either ContentItem, its subclasses, or annotations on  
>>> ContentItem) that want to provide a relevant date do so by  
>>> implementing schema.observers that call  
>>> ContentItem.updateRelevantDate() when a related date attribute  
>>> changes.
>>> - ContentItem.updateRelevantDate() calls AddRelevantDates() on  
>>> itself any stamping annotations, and the Remindable annotation,  
>>> and picks one to update 'relevantDate'/'relevantDateSource'.
>>>
>>> I'm proposing that I do something similar for 'who', though I now  
>>> think that 'relevantDate'/'relevantDateSource' would be better  
>>> named 'displayDate' and 'displayDateSource'; I'd do that, and  
>>> make the 'who' fields be 'displayWho'/'displayWhoSource'.
>>>
>>> We don't appear to need the same dynamic-ness for 'about' as  
>>> well, so at least for now, I'd get rid of the redirections from  
>>> 'about' to 'displayName': we'd index 'displayName' instead of  
>>> 'about'. Any ContentItem subclasses or Annotations that wanted to  
>>> have their own name for the displayName could use a redirectTo as  
>>> they do now; however, anyone who redirected 'about' to some other  
>>> field would need that redirection replaced by one to  
>>> 'displayName' -- for example, the Amazon parcel has a ProductName  
>>> attribute and used to redirect 'about' to it; now, it would have  
>>> a redirection from 'ProductName' to 'displayName' instead.
>>>
>>> If we need to show alternative names for the field in the UI,  
>>> such as 'Subject' if it's an email, and 'Product Name' if it's an  
>>> Amazon item, a separate mechanism will be built to look up a  
>>> localized name at display time.
>>>
>>> To allow the repository to stop supporting a generic  
>>> 'displayName' mechanism, we'd declare a concrete schema.Text  
>>> 'displayName' attribute on ContentItem.
>>>
>>> Comments?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> ...Bryan
>>>
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