RE: [e4-dev] Declarative UI

["Yves YANG" <yves.yang@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hallvard,

I think no matter the expression is abstract or concrete; it must be in
consistence with XML declarative model. 

I agree with you the naming scheme is a flexible solution. 

Best regards
Yves YANG
Soyatec - Eclipse OutSourcing & XAML for java
http://www.soyatec.com
Tel: +33 1 60 13 06 67
Mobile: +33 6 20 74 39 45
Fax: +33 9 58 07 06 67

-----Original Message-----
From: e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:e4-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Hallvard Trætteberg
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2008 3:18 PM
To: E4 Project developer mailing list
Subject: Re: [e4-dev] Declarative UI

Tom,

If I understand you correctly, you argue that we must ensure that the
programmer 
formulates the CSS against the abstract widget model, instead of the
concrete 
SWT structure. If not, we get the problem you outline. The reason I didn't
see 
any problem, is that I thought this was agreed upon, and hence implicit in
the 
discussion.

In my view, CSS may be used in three ways:
- Purely abstract, by providing default values within the model (the model I

call the toolkit model or TM). E.g. you can express that an abstract text
field 
should red if it is invalid.
- Abstract to concrete, to give hints to the mapping process from TM to SWT
(or 
Swing). E.g. you can express that the abstract style INVALID should map to
the 
SWT.COLOR_RED, or even that a certain BORDER style should use a specific
image 
for the border (assuming an implementation using an intermediate Composite).
- Concrete, to give hints about purely toolkit specific details.

Now, there are two important issues:
1) How do you distinguish between the abstract and concrete hierarchy?
2) What limitations (pitfalls) are there when you refer to concrete
elements, 
that to some extent is implementation dependent?

I don't have any answers, but I can imaging using a naming scheme to 
differentiate between concrete and abstract classes, e.g. "Text" is abstract
and 
"text" is concrete. However, I don't know CSS well enough to understand
what's 
possible.

Implementation-wise, I think it should be possible to annotate an SWT
control 
hierarchy (when it is created), using the data table, with enough
information 
about the abstract structure, to be able to navigate and skip 
intermediate/artificial Controls.

Hallvard
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