[Seaside] Form support

[Avi Bryant]

On Tue, 3 Dec 2002, Adrian Lienhard wrote:

> Shall we continue on on what I did?
> If yes, how/who? I'd like to continue (though not too fast, because I have
> not much time left).

What I'd like to do, long term, is define a standard metamodel that will
be used whenever you need to describe your data to Seaside components -
for example, the TableReport, the Form stuff you're doing, validation, and
so on.  What I mean by metamodel is something like WAReportColumn - it has
a lot of information about a particular attribute (selector, name, sort
order, how to total) without holding any actual data or doing any
rendering.  However, I'd like this to be extended to also hold the kind of
information a Form would need (description, type, size, validation rules),
and it should continue to be extended as more components require it.
Then, if your entities know how to provide this metamodel, you wouldn't
need to set it up for each form/report/etc - you'd just have to specify
the names of attributes you were interested in.

So, there are two ways we could go - you can explore the Form stuff you've
done further, not worrying about my long term goals, and once you've
figured out what the Form side of things requires, that will figure into
designing the broader model.  Or, we (and whoever else) can try to
coordinate a little bit further and spend some time trying to unify the
various models we already have (ReportColumn, Field, Validation), being
careful to keep them separate from any particular UI, and progress from
there.  Either way works, I leave it up to you.

Cheers,
Avi