I know I am late to this very, very long discussion, but after wading through
(and even skipping over some of the more “complex” emails), I think this is
become overly complicated. My understanding has been that RadioButton (for
example) in basic.css would provide the beads while .RadioButton (the same
thing, except with a defining namespace) in the theme.css would give it color,
font, and so forth.
You can use namespaces to qualify the CSS to make it less confusing. Further,
developers using className should find their selector name appended to the
class list: <div id=“radio1” class=“RadioButton FoodType”> where they specified
<js:RadioButton className=“FoodType”/> The default.css would supply the beads,
the theme.css would supply the common style, and the user’s style would add or
replace styles.
While building that Simple package, I went through dozens of tests. The browser
and CSS engine are fine at putting things together. The technique I used is
this:
addClassName(s:String) - appends the class selector to the class selector
string chain.
removeClassName(s:String) - removes the class selector from the chain (useful
for doing selection highlighting)
setClassName(s:String) - replaces the chain and resets it.
The most basic class used setClassName to establish the initial class selector.
Sub-classes, if they wanted to build a chain, used addClassName, which appended
their name to the list (eg, class=“Group List”). If a subclass was so special
that it did not want the chain and wanted to the first, then it would use
setClassName (eg, class=“List”).
The className property ALWAYS became the last in the chain. The setClassName
had no effect on it, className was always appended before the HTML was
generated. This technique gave me complete control over how things styles were
applied. <List className=“MyList”> would be class=“Group List MyList” or if
List did setClassName(“List”) to wipe out what its superclass(es) did, then you
would get class=“List MyList”.
HTH,
Peter
> On May 18, 2018, at 7:50 PM, Alex Harui <aha...@adobe.com.INVALID> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 5/18/18, 2:50 AM, "Harbs" <harbs.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And basic.css has:
> RadioButton
> {
> font-size: 12px;
> font-family: sans-serif;
> }
>
> RadioButton is a Royale Type Selector as it should be. No discussion on
> that front (with the exception that the styling should be removed from the
> defaults.css).
>
> Te whole question is what happens in MyApp.css which is compiled standard
> HTML CSS.
>
> Currently we get:
>
> .RadioButton {
> font-family: sans-serif;
> font-size: 12px;
> }
>
> This CSS comes from the Type Selector in basic.css. This seems to be
> included in the app.css even if RadioButton is not included. But putting that
> point aside at the moment, the question is what the class selector (in
> app.css) should be *produced* from the type selector.
>
> It is not obvious why RadioButton is in the app.css. This might be a new bug
> from the theme handling I did recently. I will investigate more.
>
> I think we agree that “.RadioButton" is not right because there can be
> RadioButton from more than one component set.
>
> One option is to fully qualify the *compiled* class selector so it’s named
> “.org_apache_royale_html_RadioButton”. I’m pretty sure this is what you are
> proposing. The primary objection to that is that it’s a rather long string
> and kind of “ugly”.
>
> You can choose other string transformations, but the key point is that they
> should be derived from the unique QName. Any other scheme just means that
> the developer has to solve the unique name problem twice which increases the
> chance of collision.
>
> Another option is “.basic.Button”. The advantage of this approach is
> mostly aesthetics. It also has the advantage of being theoretically more
> flexible because CSS can be applied to “basic" and “Button” separately. Of
> course that goes both ways and if there’s css applied to “.Button” by
> mistake, it can effect the “basic” Button where it’s not supposed to.
>
> I'm not clear how the compiler or the ValuesManager (at runtime) can
> efficiently associate .basic.Button with org.apache.royale.basic.Button.
> Metadata lookups can be expensive.
>
>
>> If one problem is with Type Selectors in Royale inheriting styles from Base
>> Classes, we should discuss ways to manage that. Metadata is possible, but
>> metadata is expensive at runtime.
>
> Good point about extra code from meta tags. Maybe the compiler could strip
> these out?
>
> My point is that ValuesManager will need this information at runtime.
>
> My suggestion with meta-data was a way to enable the second option. It
> does not need to be specifically meta-tags. It could be something like this
> as well:
>
> /**
> * royaleclassselector RadioButton
> * royaleclassprefix basic
> * royaleinheritsbaseselector
> */
>
> These ASDoc directives are definitely not available at runtime.
>
>
>> There are two parts to how Type Selectors work. The main concern appears to
>> be the ClassReferences kind of CSS, which is not handled by the Browser.
>> The IValuesImpl has to decide whether to look up the base class and it would
>> have to fetch and parse metadata at runtime to do that. And, as I mentioned
>> earlier, I'm not sure the compiler can know whether the base class is in the
>> output because it was directly instantiated or not.
>
> I’m not sure how the IValuesImpl actually works, so I have no thoughts on
> this front. I’m not clear on whether there is currently an issue with that.
> I’ve been discussing plain CSS which *is* handled by the browser.
>
>> Historically, the only reason Type Selectors inherit from Base Classes in
>> Flex is because of app developer subclassing. For sure, we the framework
>> developers can always take the time to fill out the Type Selectors such that
>> the lookup never goes to the Base Class. But the app devs just want to use
>> a component as the top tag in an MXMLComponent or do a cheap "MyButton
>> extends Button" in AS. And without inheritance, you don't get any defaults
>> and things blow up.
>>
>> We could say to the app devs:: "too bad, in Royale you gotta copy the base
>> class type selector". I would imagine non-Royale folks have to copy HTML
>> Type Selectors in some cases already.
>>
>> We could try to find all subclasses of classes that have Type Selectors that
>> don't have their own Type Selector and have the compiler auto-copy that base
>> class Type Selector (or add the subclass to the list of classes for that
>> selector.
>
> I think we *should* have inheritance (like we have today) unless a
> subclass specifically disables it using metadata or what-have-you.
>
>
> Let's try some example code:
>
> <Application>
> <initialView>
> <View>
> <ComboBox>
> <RadioButton />
> </View>
> </iniialView>
> </Application>
>
> Button will be linked in because ComboBox composites a Button. It will also
> be linked in because RadioButton subclasses Button. There is code in
> IValuesImpls that loop through the base classes to resolve Type Selector
> inheritance. Roughly:
>
> Var baseClass:Class = thisObject.getBaseClass();
> While (baseClass) {
> Var qname = getQualifiedClassName(baseClass);
> Var stylesObject:Object = styles[qname];
> If (stylesObject != null && stylesObject[styleProp] !== undefined)
> Return stylesObject[styleProp]
> baseClass = baseClass.getBaseClass();
> }
>
> When looking up styles for RadioButton, if you don't want this code to then
> go check for Button (which will rightly be in the app.css because of
> ComboBox) you will need some metadata or other information at runtime. You
> can't rely on the Button styles not being there because the compiler saw the
> metadata on RadioButton and decided not to put the Button styles in the
> app.css.
>
> And also, I don't think there is a way to easily know what caused a reference
> to Button in the first place. Take out ComboBox and replace it with:
>
> <fx:Script>
> Var foo:Button;
> </fx:Script>
>
> Button never gets instantiated, but it was used and therefore linked in. I
> don't see how the compiler could know that Button was never directly
> instantiated and thus can be pruned from the app.css.
>
> That's why instead of coming up with fancy pruning schemes, I recommend that
> we try different ways of solving the problems caused if Type Selectors don't
> inherit styles from base classes ever. Then the code in the IValuesImpl
> wouldn't have a loop. Then maybe the compiler should detect that a simple
> subclass has no styles and add that subclass to the styles in the app.css
>
> MyRadioButton, RadioButton {
> ...
> }
>
> Thoughts?
> -Alex
>
>
>
