Re: gui builder issues?

Emiliano Heyns wrote:

>On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 11:23:09PM -0800, Tupshin Harper wrote:
>  
>
>>I've been comtemplating what issues there might be in creating a gui 
>>designer in XWT.
>>
>>One question which I don't see an answer to, is whether there is a way 
>>to enumerate all widgets loaded into the app (core widgets plus any 
>>loaded from the xwar or dynamically at runtime).
>>    
>>
>
>The first problem would be to define what constitutes a widget in the
>first place. In any XWT (ibex?) app, there's going to be many templates
>that the user won't think of as a widget (since it'll have a single
>purpose, like a specific pane grouping widgets to form the app gui) but
>that could technically be used as such.
>
>Maybe we should explicitly mark widgets? An attribute on the toplevel
>that has no purpose but to identify it as an entity meant to be
>presented as a widget in a gui builder?
>  
>
This is along the lines of what I was thinking.

>>The followup is whether it is possible to enumerate all properties, 
>>traps, etc., of those widgets.
>>    
>>
>
>You'll know that better than I do. When instantiated you could easily
>enumerate properties (a JS object is just an array after all), but I
>don't know if you can distinguish between properties and methods and
>traps, and I don't know if you can/should instantiate a widget just to
>inspect it.
>  
>
I don't know about should, but can probably isn't a problem...I'm 
assuming I could instantiate it in a hidden box, enumerate what I needed 
to do and then destroy it.

>Maybe here too it'd be worthwhile to not rely upon reflection but
>explicitly document what the UI builder can use, and how.
>  
>
What kind of explicit documentation do you mean?

-Tupshin