Subject: Re: Scripting, formal docs and reliability
From: Mike Nordell (tamlin@algonet.se)
Date: Sat Jan 27 2001 - 23:51:24 CST
WJCarpenter wrote:
> mike> Now, how would you do this in a (any) scripting language? You'd
> mike> position the cursor at a specific IP and tell the the WP
> mike> (AbiWord) to "insert these characters".
>
> My direct experience is that this is an on-target observation, and
> it's not really limited to thoughts of a scripting interface.
No, of course not. Is was really trying to start a new thread that perhaps
we should really try to get an event system (or something like that) in
place that use these same mechanisms that any scripting language would be
able to do. I felt that if we bury any of these operations too deep down in
AW we would possibly never get it to work reasonably with a scripting
engine.
> We have an object model that is sort of oriented toward telling the
> states of things (this text is here, this attribute is turned on here,
> this set of stuff is there), but there really isn't that much
> abstraction of actions.
That's my point. Thanks for using a lot fewer words. Our action abstractions
is more-or-less non-existant. I made an attempt at the cursor (which is
still hanging in the air, though it was mentioned lately). But that's just a
part of it, we need to decouple the keyboard input from the View and make it
work through a Controller for the Document and *then* let the View know
about the changes. This is non-negotiable, it must be done, sooner or later.
Post 1.0 would probably be hell why I'd like to get a discussion going
before 1.0.
> To accomplish any action, you have to know a
> lot about how all the state pieces relate to each other. Yes, some of
> the action abstraction does exist, but it's spotty and hard to trip
> across.
>
> You can argue till the cows come home about details, but it's pretty
> clear emacs got this right about a thousand years ago.
I won't argue even if you mention goats. :-) Since it still has it working
that perhaps displays that it *is* really reasonably/well designed re. this
matter.
> You've got to separate out the logical editing operations
> from all this plumbing stuff.
Which is what I think the C in MVC is all about. I've mentioned it before,
for *complex* applications using "documents" there is a need for a
controller besides the view. Mix them and you create a mess. I think we
currently have part (if not all) of that mess (and then some ;-> ).
> So, I agree (and I don't really care that much one way or
> another about scripting in AbiWord).
Me neither, I just use it as a WP and can't even imagine why I would like to
script it.. :-)
Nevertheless, I *do* care about it not handling it "right" currently.
Perhaps we should make some sort of POW (not POW, but something along its
lines, only greater in time) for these kind of issues? I believe this is
something that we need to do sooner or later anyway, why not try to put it
in writing as one of our (at least internal) long term goals? Would it fit
in the top-level abi/TODO?
/Mike - you know, don't cc
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