[e4-dev] Some thoughts about Animations API

["Gorkem Ercan" <gercan@xxxxxxx>]

I have been trying to implement the animations API for eSWT (Nokia
platforms) and I would like to share some thoughts about the API.

It looks like the interpolators are in the very early stage and I
could not really make up how they are planned to be used. I am
assuming the interpolators are meant to be like the easings(
http://www.robertpenner.com/easing/). I think it is necessary to have
a set of common interpolations (or easings ) provided by the API.
Perhaps, we can consider the ones from
http://www.robertpenner.com/easing/ to be the set provided by the API
(they are under BSD license). I think in most cases the readily
provided interpolations will be used but it would be good to have the
possibility to write your own as well.

A missing piece is the transitions. It is not easily possible to
create a UI that transitions from one state to another with the
current API. For instance animating the transition of several widgets
and or several properties when a Shell is maximized to a different
state and restoring back requires a lot of coding with the current
API. There is a need for an API that is capable of holding states and
animating them when they are activated.

On some minor notes. I could not really see any reason for the
Animation class to be a concrete class. Also I am not sure if
SequenceAnimation and ParalelAnimation is really needed perhaps they
should only be style bits for CompositeAnimation.

--
Gorkem