[Dev] New name for the TrunkParentBlock mechanism

[Philippe Bossut]

Since "Trunk" is already used when creating trees of blocks (and since 
it's a well understood metaphor), I'd stay with the tree metaphor and 
use "root" since it's the parent of a "trunk".
"root" is maybe too generic though but I'd avoid introducing a new 
substantive like "tree" (unless it's used somewhere else to designate 
the hierarchy of blocks) so I'd vote for "TrunkRoot". If there's no 
ambiguity though "TreeRoot" (proposed by John) seems fine.

BTW, Bryan, are you going to rename things like "MainTPB"?

Cheers,
- Philippe

John Anderson wrote:

> Hi Bryan:
>
> Here are some ideas:
>
> TreeSocket
> TreeRoot
> TreeRootSocket
> SocketBlock
>
> John
>
> Bryan Stearns wrote:
>
>> Many people have complained that the TrunkParentBlock mechanism has a 
>> crappy name. I'm soliciting new names.
>>
>> Here's an overview of the mechanism to help you understand what it's 
>> for:
>>
>> CPIA represents the UI world as a hierarchy of blocks: the root of 
>> the hierarchy is a block that corresponds to the outermost frame 
>> window, and every two-dimensional space within is represented by a 
>> child block in this hierarchy.
>>
>> For the most part, huge chunks of this hierarchy are "static": For 
>> instance, the sidebar is composed of a little sub-hierarchy of blocks 
>> whose relationship is invariant; some blocks may not always be 
>> visible, but the hierarchy always looks like this:
>> - SidebarContainer
>>  - Sidebar
>>  - PreviewAndMiniCalendar
>>    - PreviewArea
>>    - MiniCalendar
>>
>> However, in other places in our grand hierarchy of blocks, we need to 
>> be able to dynamically change a subtree hanging off that particular 
>> point. It happens that there are three places where we do this 
>> currently:
>> - The most obvious case of this is the detail view: depending on what 
>> kind of item you've got selected in the summary or calendar, a 
>> particular "tree of blocks" is built for displaying that kind of 
>> item, and that's what you see in the detail view.
>> - If you think about it, you'll realize that this also happens at the 
>> point between the sidebar and the main content area: depending on 
>> what collections or views you've got selected in the sidebar, you'll 
>> see a different tree of blocks displayed in the main content area: 
>> the summary table + DV, the calendar + DV, the repository viewer, etc.
>> - We also have one of these points at the very root of the block 
>> hierarchy; this is the way John implemented "skins".
>>
>> So, back to naming: The block off of which we hang these trees of 
>> blocks is currently named TrunkParentBlock, because it's the parent 
>> to a single block, the 'trunk', of one of these trees of blocks.
>>
>> We can't use "view", which already has special meaning for certain 
>> blocks at other points in the tree.
>>
>> Any other ideas?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> ...Bryan
>>
>> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>>
>> Open Source Applications Foundation "Dev" mailing list
>> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
>
>
>
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
> Open Source Applications Foundation "Dev" mailing list
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/dev