[Laszlo-user] Modular and Styled OL Application

[Max Carlson]

This is a great discussion!  The fact is, the current component set 
needs modernization to be more easily extensible, styleable, etc.  It's 
  an old code base that's been brought along as the runtime has been 
modernized.  There's lots of room for improvement!

Right now the OpenLaszlo team is focused on Flash 9 support, which 
promises to bring huge performance benefits.  As you know, rewriting 
components is a big job and something do plan to do with the community's 
help.

Of course, we'd love any contributions, even if it's just towards the 
design.  It would be great to get some more specifics about which design 
choices you made, and why.  For example, what about the existing 
selection and drag/drop management didn't work for you?  Were things 
broken or did you just need to extend them?

Also, it sounds like some of the smaller bits could be very useful to 
the community, e.g. subcommands, especially if they are integrated into 
the LFC.

It's really valuable to know what problems you faced with the language 
and any APIs and extension points you needed so we can make sure they're 
addressed in the next round.

And yes, I agree fully about XML models needing to send a 'delete' 
event.  REST support is critical - what issues are you seeing?  I want 
to make sure this is working.

Thanks for being a part of the community, and giving such astute feedback!

Greg Denton wrote:
> I have no plans to open source due to (1) the time required, (2) the
> fact that my components are not complete and not stylable either, and
> (3) the feeling that since much of the power of the framework rests on
> (tight) integration with the special "xml model" layer it would not be
> as valuable to others.
> 
> It would require a bit of work to redesign for less coupling between
> these subsystems (for "mixing and matching"). I also took a lot of
> performance shortcuts/improvements by favoring callbacks over events.
> The subsystems are all pretty tightly integrated:
> 
> - recoding of form components for my own graphic look and to be data
> driven using the xml model code
> - extension to command functionality for execution and subcommands,
> tied to context menus and selection
> - selection management: tied to commands, extended tree and form
> selection, window activation
> - drag/drop: special dragger code, integrated with sink registration
> - xml models supporting "deleting" notifications, undo/redo, cross
> references/dependencies between objects
> 
> Oddly, after all this work there is a hard show stopper for me: lack
> of REST support for SOLO apps :(.
> 
> If you would like some input to a discussion of OL frameworks let me know.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 9:27 PM, Simon Cornelius P. Umacob
> <simoncpu at infoweapons.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Leonardo Mateo wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Dave Miller <dwmiller at umich.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 1:28 PM, Greg Denton wrote:
>>>>> A sympathetic note....#2 is a real pain. I asked the same question a
>>>>> while back. I wound up rewriting all of the component classes (using
>>>>> the base classes) that my app uses as the lz ones are so ugly and only
>>>>> minimally styleable (color, font). It turns out that the data handling
>>>>> for the components was not what I liked anyway, and I needed to do
>>>>> selection management, so it was inevitable. I had to create a whole
>>>>> application framework to do what I wanted. Lots of time. What I have
>>>>> now is valuable (in terms of functionality) but has to be closely
>>>>> maintained. I'm sure a lot of developers are doing the same thing.
>> Do you guys have plans on open sourcing some of your components?  Maybe we
>> can work together on writing custom components or something... =)
>>
>> [ simon.cpu ]
>> p.s.: Any news on regex support for edittext?
>>
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>> --
>> And /usr/games/fortune futurama says:
>>
>> Pop a Poppler in your mouth
>> When you come to Fishy Joe's
>> What they're made of is a mystery
>> Where they come from no one knows
>> You can pick 'em you can lick 'em you can chew 'em you can stick 'em
>> If you promise not to sue us you can shove one up your nose.
>>

-- 
Regards,
Max Carlson
OpenLaszlo.org