[Seaside] Design of WAComponent(s)

[Lukas Renggli]

>  please do not overrate my choice of WATree. My ideas were more general. I
>  did not know that WATree has such special status or else I would have picked
>  another example.

Sure, there are many similar examples.

>  > It is so simple and quick to create my own widget that does exactly
>  > what I need, why should I bother with a huge library that could do
>  > everything after hours of configuration?
>
> and this is a point where I disagree. Surely I follow your aversion against
>  an Überframework like Swing. But I have seen too many copy&paste
>  applications to know that the average developer out there needs and likes
>  some guidance through designed inner structure of frameworks.

I should have added: "... and it is hard to create a widget that fits
all needs."

I guess WATableReport (or WATreeReport) is already a bit closer to
your imagination (they both have a model for their columns)?

>  Right now things are small and the number of components is manageable. With
>  a growing number of components and component features I fear that we might
>  see a similar development as the wrapper framework of VisualWorks. It used
>  to be based on a simple, clear and powerful model. Then step by step it got
>  overloaded by features and variation. Today its implementation is "baked
>  together" with a lot of copy&paste.

Seaside 2.8 is slightly smaller than Seaside 2.7, without dropping
functionality.

Seaside 2.9 will be much smaller than Seaside 2.8, by separately
packaging external functionality.

>  Another example of this implementation vs. design choice is the composition
>  of components. Right now a component uses a composite pattern by convention.
>  I would prefer the composite pattern to be pre-implemented. I am sure this
>  has been discussed excessively already :-)

There used to be WAContainer and WAFrameComponent. WAContainer was
dropped a long time ago because its functionality was integrated into
WAComponent. WAFrameComponent was dropped in Seaside 2.7, because
there were no users.

>  Did you refer to this mailing list or to seaside-dev for the 2.9 features
>  discussions?

To this mailing-list. seaside-dev is not that old ;-)

>  If you like to see how such frameworks scale, I will try this out.

I am interested too. Keep us updated.

Cheers,
Lukas

-- 
Lukas Renggli
http://www.lukas-renggli.ch