Carsten Ziegeler wrote:
Reinhard Poetz wrote:
Hi all,
I'd like to introduce a compact notation on form
template elements for
stylings that require only attributes (the vast
majority of them).
For example, we currently have to write:
<ft:widget id="text">
<fi:styling type="textarea" rows="10"
cols="30"/>
</ft:widget>
The compact notation would allow to write:
<ft:widget id="text" type="textarea" rows="10"
cols="30"/>
The more verbose form will still be allowed, and
both forms will produce
the same results, as foreign attributes on
"ft:widget" will lead to
generating a <fi:styling> with these attributes.
Another thing I'd like to change also is the need
for
submit-on-change="true", making it implicit on
widgets that have some
attached change listeners.
That will make form templates less verbose and
closer to the traditional
html syntax.
Any objections?
generally not. While reading your proposal I had the
idea of using prefixed attributes to make it very
clear that they contain styling information:
<ft:widget id="text" fi:type="textarea" fi:rows="10"
fi:cols="30"/>
This should also help with validation.
I agree with Reinhard here, we should use the namespace for the styling
attributes to clearly indicate that these attributes are for styling.
Ok. You're right that this clearly indicates their purpose, even if it's
3 more keystrokes per attribute :-)
Apart from that I'm not against your suggestion, but I don't see a real
benefit.
Well, saving keystokes and enhancing readability ! So the benefit is to
make the template writer's life easier.
Imho it gets more complicated as now two different notations
are possible and users will worry about when to use what, or if there is
a difference etc.
I think once this is done we should recommend the attribute notation,
except where hierarchical styling configuration is needed (AFAIR, only
htmlarea allows this currently).
In addition creating an fi:styling element out of
attributes from a ft:widget element might be too much magic.
Remember that most if not all CForms users never see the expanded
template. Only people writing styling stylesheets have to care about this.
What happens if you use both?
The stylesheets always use 'fi:styling/@foo' paths. So as long as both
the <ft:widget> and <fi:styling> do not hold the same attributes, the
two stylings are merged.
If however the same attribute appears on both, then the concatenation of
attributes will be used (because of XPath's node-list to string
conversion) and then the styling will likely malfunction. But that case
is a buggy template.
So, if the majority thinks that it's useful, I'm ok with it - but I remain
sceptical.
Aren't you tried of:
- unclosing a ft:widget with no styling,
- type fi:styling
- type styling attributes
- close ft:widget
- and finally indent everything?
This proposal is about turning this to just "type styling attributes" :-)
Sylvain
--
Sylvain Wallez Anyware Technologies
http://people.apache.org/~sylvain http://www.anyware-tech.com
Apache Software Foundation Member Research & Technology Director
