Re[1]: Wizards and W3 integration (was: A road map for Oort Gnus)

[Eric M. Ludlam]

>>> Per Abrahamsen <address@hidden> seems to think that:
>Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <address@hidden> writes:
>
>> Per Abrahamsen <address@hidden> writes:
>> 
  [ ... ]
>> > Depending on how much control is needed, it could be build upon either
>> > custom or the widget library.  I don't think the programming part will
>> > be that hard, the real challenge would be designing the wizards
>> > themselves. 
>> 
>> If we had a proper framework for building wizards, I think writing the
>> wizards themselves would be quite a lot of typing; yes, but not very
>> complicated typing.
>
>It is not the typing that is hard, but the design.  What are the
>really important questions for this application?  Which things can be
>safely assume?  How can we prensent the concept in a way the average
>user can understand?
>
>> I envision a kind of rule-based framework.  "The user has input this
>> and this information, and this and this exists on the system, so we
>> present the user with this information and these choices."
>> 
>> I don't think writing that kind of framework would be trivial...
>
>I envision a markup language with embedded widgets and embedded Lisp.
>Trivial stuff to implement, in fact, Bill Perry have already
>implemented it (not that W3 is trivial, but this part is).  It just
>needs to be integrated, and an example wizard.  As we get practical
>experience from writing wizards, we would write more widgets and more
>Lisp functions, making the progress evolutionary.
  [ ... ]

Hello,

  On the concept of wizards, dialog boxes, what have you, Paul
Kinnucan has a small wizard library, and a dialog box library which he
wrote for dealing with the complexities of the JDE, and all the
options it has.  (I added Paul the CC list above so he can correct me
if I make an error.)

  The dialog box stuff (which I am guessing would interest you most,
since his wizards are targeted at code generation using tempo) is
based on EIEIO (which I wrote, so naturally I think it's cool.  FSF
even has papers for it.)

  The idea is that he has several classes the create and manage dialog
boxes using custom's widgets.  To make a specific dialog box, you can
inherit from a base class, and make a specific instance.  This whole
system is then wired into the `interactive' command to extra spiffy
effect.

  So, the long and short of it is the `markup language' would be Emacs
Lisp, but I doubt that would bum any Emacs hackers out.  If it does,
the FSF just so happens to have papers for my parser generator which
would be perfect for parsing a simple deterministic invented
data-language.

  Not to bomb William Perry's efforts or anything, HTML is great at
this stuff too, and I like w3 in general.  Just another angle where
some solutions already exist.

Eric

-- 
          Eric Ludlam:                 address@hidden, address@hidden
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