CPIA Refactoring Kickoff - John

Philippe's notes

CPIA Simplifications Tasks

John will merge the various lists of tasks and post a unique one on the CPIA Framework^? page.

• Event Dispatch: Bug 5846 is on event code simplification
• Didn't come to an agreement on how to dispatch the events
• 1:1 mapping to wxWidgets, is that really required? Should not be required. Container blocks don't for instance. May be this should be simplified further. We had problems in the past though because of some layout issues.
• Blocks linked to sizers right now
• Issues with Splitters. The layout hierarchy makes difficult to move events from block to block.
• Alec arguing we should move to a more Chandler specific layout model for the main window: layout panels horizontally with draggable intermediate panels
• Jeffrey suggests to map the Chandler model as a "data driven model" rather than "layout driven". Not that easy according to Alec and John (who tried).

Sidebar

• Very specialized widget. Should be simplified (may be).
• Currently can support collections and blocks.
• Should it be supporting only collections? This currently creates issues with functional tests (because it's tested).
• Consensus: we will limit sidebar to be a UI for Collections (Trash + SmartCollections)
• Consequence: we'll suppress Repository Viewer

BranchParentBlocks

This could be simplified if we make sidebar specialized. The top one could be hard coded to make things easier to read.

IndexedCollections

Issue parked. Needs to involve Andi.

Skins

• Only advantage so far: find bugs.
• Complexify the code somewhat, tested in functional tests.
• Consensus: We should substitute with a simple validation test "tear down the UI and rebuild it" test and suppress the Skins.

Will we support other framework than wx?

• No in general, may be for parcels.
• Reid and John to discuss.

Multiple Windows and Dialogs

• Write the dialogs in CPIA? Not sure. Doesn't look like a huge payoff.
• We have a simple Util for parcels. People can use XRCed (free) or Designer (for a fee).
• Having Attribute Editor in Dialogs would be nice but that's not a high prio right now. This also could be done without having all of CPIA in dialogs.
• We may want that for email editing.
• Shouldn't be too difficult to add in CPIA.

-- PhilippeBossut - 26 May 2006