[Dev] XML for CPIA

[Bryan Stearns]

There's an important tool that I've got in Python that you don't have in 
XML: "def". :-)

There's a lot of duplicated block definitions in detail's parcel.xml, 
and it'd be just as big (item for item, attribute for attribute) in your 
proposal. I could get rid of most of the duplication with a function 
whose interface might start out looking like this:
  def MakeDetailViewRow(parcel, namePrefix, label, 
areaClass=ContentItemDetail, position=None, presentationStyle=None):
     ...

and would build the area block, the label, spacers, and AEBlock; it'd 
encapsulate detail-view-specific defaults like 'borders' that would be 
different from the raw attribute defaults).

I'm sure this function's parameter list would grow, but at least I could 
see at a glance what the possibilities are (another problem with XML is 
that I need to look at the schema, in several places because of 
inheritance, to see what attributes defaults are; using a function 
definition for common cases shortens my learning curve.

You call this a "specialized use", but I'd suggest that your definitions 
of menuitems could use exactly the same sort of specialization.

...Bryan

Alec Flett wrote:

> Bryan Stearns wrote:
>
>> I'm looking forward to declaring UI elements in Python because Python 
>> is much more flexible and concise  than XML. For instance, if you 
>> look at the detail view's parcel.xml today, you see a lot of the same 
>> structures (like "an area containing a label and an attribute 
>> editor") and constants (like the borders around various blocks).
>
>> The thing I hate most about parcel.xml is that there's no way for me 
>> to represent or encapsulate this repetiton; the new proposal suffers 
>> from the same problem.
>
> Fair enough. It sounds like you have a specialized use and this 
> particular proposal may not suit the detail view. However, I wonder 
> how much effort is going into parameterizing the creation of these 
> detail-specific blocks, when the CPIA xml might be fairly simple. I 
> hate redundancy as well, but maybe its enough better than parcel.xml 
> that it might be worth looking at? Let's try.
>
> <CalendarAllDayBlock id="CalendarAllDayArea">
>   <StaticText id="CalDetailsAllDayLabel" border="4,0,0,0" 
> title="all-day".../>
>   <StaticText minimumSize="8,-1"/>
>   <AEBlock id="EditAllDay" viewAttribute="allDay" border="2,2,2,2"/>
> </DetailRow>
>
>   So the "Cal" or "Calendar" appears 3 times here.. plus I imagine the 
> text/spacer/AEBlock is part of the repetition you're talking about. So 
> I'd be curious what the parameterized python might be like. This is 
> obviously a very simplistic version of what you're trying to do as 
> well, so I'm sure it only gets more complicated, not less :)
>
> So you're probably right, this might not be appropriate for complex 
> stuff in the detail view... worth the exercise, anyway!
>
> But as the UI gets more complex (dashboard, toolbar, menus, etc) I can 
> still see value in being able to declare a large part of it in XML.


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