Re: [OS-webwork] ui:hidden and ui:submit

Hani Suleiman Wed, 06 Nov 2002 15:31:43 -0800

No, because here is what happens:

- User X points out that feature Y is unintuitive, and suggests a not-insane alternative
- Eager developer Z implements said feature, maintains backward compatibility etc etc
- User K points out that feature Y is intuitive, but wants a minor tweak to it
- Eager developer Z adds minor tweak, tests, forward ports to modified Y, sighs, but is happy
(repeat a few times)
- Developer Z now sees the folly of constant change
- Project is now a mess of a million ways of doing the same thing, each of which is different enough that any new end user is thrown off by the sheer amount of things to consider.

Is it a stupid idea to modify propertytag? Probably not. Is it worth adding two new tags that are subsets of property tag? Definitely not.

And I disagree with the 'our perspective' comment too. I AM an end user. I do not consider myself a webwork developer, I feel I've earnt my user status by deliberately not thinking or doing anything beyond skimming all the emails talking about webwork's internals. I know nothing of how elegant or ugly its internals are. I didn't even know the dual usage of propertytag until it was pointed out here.

So yes, 'because it makes sense' is not a good enough reason to add something, because one should always keep context in mind, what currently exists, how the new 'sensible' thing will interact with it, how will things be further down the road, etc etc. I've given this my best shot, we can agree to disagree I think, posting dogma back and forth won't really help anyone. The world (and webwork) is big enough for both of our religions.

Hani

On Wednesday, November 6, 2002, at 05:43 PM, Patrick Lightbody wrote:

You're missing my point. It's not to bring up the issue again. I repeat:
It's not to bring up the issue again. Again, I repeat: It's not to bring up
the issue.

It's to point out that our perspective is not that of the common end user.
It's to say that saying, "because it makes sense" is not good enough (as I
was just told a bit ago by Maurice and Rickard). The issue of property tag
is nothing to me (I use ww:property, always will), but the issue of folks
discarding suggestions not on the merit of the argument FOR the change, but
on the reason for keeping things as is. Following this logic, this project
will get nowhere fast. No one ever addressed the reasons for the issue, only
that the introducing two new tags would complicate the matter. That was not
the issue raised. The issue raised was that property tag does two things and
does not follow good design practices.

Adding it to the documentation is fine. But then that argument is now
working against other suggestions -- such as configuration. Couldn't we just
say, "we'll add it to the docs"? To be quite honest, I find many folks on
this list to be quite contradictory. In some cases things should be so
simple they work without looking at documentation (views.properties), in
other cases things are so confusing that documentation must be written to
explain it (ww:property). Logical? You be the judge...

-Pat

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hani Suleiman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 2:19 PM
Subject: Re: [OS-webwork] ui:hidden and ui:submit

Argh, give up! We've argued propertytag to death, we agreed that the

solution

is to ensure the documentation is clear. Enough already!

I'm reminded of the boy who cried wolf, to be honest. If someone keeps
repeating the same thing over and over again (that others disagree with),

then

when that person actually says something insightful that's worth listening

to,

people will assume it's the same old nonsense just out of sheer habit.


Quoting Patrick Lightbody <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

Agreed! But please don't loose site of the ww:property tag arguments
either.
It really is doing two jobs and the only reason we like it (I like it

too!)

and it makes sense (makes sense to me!) is because we've grown

accustomed

to
it. But you cannot deny it is doing two different jobs: push and print.

An

intuitive design would be to have two different tags. It's what is

logical

for the majority of people not familiar with WebWork. So a compromise

would

be to keep ww:property but add ww:push and ww:print.

-Pat

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hani Suleiman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 2:09 PM
Subject: [OS-webwork] ui:hidden and ui:submit

Actually, while I've pretty much agreed with Maurice on every single

point
he's

made, this is one case where I agree that ui:hidden and ui:submit

would

make
sense.

Webwork is proud of the fact that it's so skinnable. The fact that you
can
easily swap in templates for any form elements is tremendously useful.
Picture
a 'debug' skin, which would actually display the hidden tags. Now

isn't

that so

much nicer than having to trawl through a source view of your html?

The same argument can be made for submit buttons/imgs, I think. It's

just

pleasant being able to swap so easily, it'd give that exact warm fuzzy
feeling
I get when I trivially change one line somewhere to make all my
textfields
have
a cute question mark next to them that points to live help, or define
a 'required' parameter that automatically highlights them, etc etc.

Quoting Patrick Lightbody <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Anders has had a good point all along. <ww:property/> is really

doing

two

jobs: push and print. We are all OK with it because we're used to

it.

But

his post below of course looks completely silly... why would you

want

<ww:property/> to do push, print, AND include. That's just silly,

right?

Well, now move your perspective to someone who hasn't used

<ww:property/>

for 2 years. Move it to a WebWork newbie, but someone who is still

smart

and
can see the obvious misnomer of "property". Try real hard before you
dismiss
it. Open your mind up. And then remember you can still have property

for

compatibility and for people that are used to it, but <ww:print
property="foo"/> and <ww:push property="foo">...</ww:push> would

make a

hell
of a lot more sense.

OK, now let's think about <ui:hidden/>, another good idea shot down.
Imagine
you are new to webwork, but you're a good developer that has never

read

much
documentation, since most good APIs just work like they should. So

you

wrote
a JSP with <ui:textfield/> and <ui:select/>, and then, since hidden

is

just

another type of input, you decided to write <ui:hidden/>, since that

makes

sense (I mean, you've got a UI tag for everything else). Again, try

hard

before you dismiss it. Don't say, "well hidden doesn't need error

messages,

so we shouldn't include it". Open your mind up -- try to be THAT

person

described above. It's a matter of doing what a smart newbie would

most

likely do. I know I would. I just had to add a hidden tag to a JSP

page

that
used exclusively JSP taglibs (WebWork's UI tags as well as some

custom

helpers). But since there was no hidden, I crapped up the JSP with

HTML.

Does that really make sense -- especially for an incredibly small

addition

that completes the set of mapping from WebWork tags to HTML <input>

tags?

-Pat

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hani Suleiman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 1:29 PM
Subject: Re: [OS-webwork] more flexible property tag

Again, that age old question....why? Why this hatred of the

unloved

and

unappreciate if/iterator tags? What have they ever done to you?

Quoting boxed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

I've had a most enlightening conversation on irc recently. A

friend

of

mine

pointed out that property tag and iterator tag can be merged:
<ww:property value="foo">
  do something
</ww:property>

can iterate through the values if foo is a collection.

Furthermore,

we

can

merge the property tag and the if tag:
<ww:property value="foo">
  do something
</ww:property>

will "do something" if foo evaluates to not null (and if it's a

boolean

type
to true). But wait! There's more! We can also merge it with the

include

tag:
<ww:property value="'foo.jsp'"/>
can do an include if "foo.jsp" exists. We can also make it

handle

actions:

<ww:property value="'foo.action'"/>
can do just what <ww:action value="'foo.action'"/> does today if

the

string

evaluates to an action!

You wanted a flexible property tag mike ("The property tag is

flexible

not
confusing!" as you so nicely put it). Time you show that you

mean

it.

// Anders Hovmvller

PS. Yes it's sarcasm, but note that the first two examples are

real

world

example from my friends version of the property tag for his

framework

DS.



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Re: [OS-webwork] ui:hidden and ui:submit

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