[Seaside] Seaside2: separation between content and presentation

tblanchard@mac.com seaside@lists.squeakfoundation.org
Tue, 3 Dec 2002 00:49:58 +0100


On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, at 12:30  AM, Avi Bryant wrote:

> One of the things Colin and I are working on right now for Tantalus 
> (the
> O/R framework we use internally, but that occasionally sees open 
> releases)
> is the ability to use a .eomodeld to describe the mapping - this should
> make migration a lot easier for EOF users.  Tantalus is not yet up to 
> EOF
> standards (one thing it sorely lacks is a good query facility, which
> GLORP does have, I think...) but it'll get there eventually; if you're
> interested in using/improving it, let us know.

I think I'm going to try to figure out glorp first.  The idea of using 
boolean blocks as query qualifiers is way cool.  I'm curious why you 
don't just use that.

I have a partially finished java eof replacement complete with nearly 
finished java swing eomodeler.  I lost interest in working on it when I 
ended up with a new copy of webobjects as a result of my current 
contract.  Plus I'm just plain sick of java.  Wouldn't mind taking a 
stab at a squeak modeler.  I also just finished a propertylist reader 
before I noticed yours (I had one in Java already - I just ported it).

> Can you elaborate?  I don't buy that WO has any more separation - does
> anybody ever treat the template/bindings/class triad as anything but a
> single unit?

The triad is a unit - but its composed of other triads.  In any given 
app, there are few pages and many components.  The pages typically just 
contain layout in the form of tables and references to other components 
- plus the action logic is there.

>   The tools sure don't make that convenient.

No, they are lame.  I don't use the tools - I just edit the files.  I 
rather like using HTML itself for the layout - it makes rearranging a 
page easy for a designer to do.

>   If you wanted
> more separation in Seaside, an obvious thing to do would be to pair 
> each
> component class with one or more view classes, and move the rendering
> logic to the views - I don't see an advantage to enforcing that, 
> however.

It might make some things less error prone.  I need more experience 
with it to say for sure though.  As an example - the config app in 
Seaside has nested forms on it - I think partly because it was put 
together in a hurry and you did all the widgetry just for that app.  A 
visual designer would be a lovely thing too and view components might 
make that easier to build.