Quoting Om <bigosma...@gmail.com>:
2. Design area: This would be a container where we will draw the objects
I actually wrote a RuledCanvas component 3 years ago that exactly mimicked
fireworks interface with the sliding rulers, drag and drop components onto
the "floating canvas". I spent about 2 years on it. It has rulers, snap,
resize, move, guides a grid etc. hehe Search google for ResizeManagerFX
That was a commercial component I mad for Flex 2.
That is fantastic! I have written something similar, but that is
proprietary code. I was planning to write everything from scratch. Any
chance you could contribute your component to Apache Flex?
I'm thinking about it now. It's funny, at the beginning of this thread
I said I really didn't want to have anything to do with this and now
look at me. I guess I just need at least one other person to be
excited and have a plan. :)
As usual, code from 4 years ago needs a bit of work and probably isn't
implemented as good as it could be but, we can use it for a jumping
off point if this gets started.
I found a version I was actually working on last year before the Adobe
crap on developers November happened that I was converting to Spark.
I will have to dig into some of my Backup Cd's! for the original that
had all the guides and snapping. Rotation always killed me and that
will need to be implemented.
4. Properties area: Properties such as: styles, skins, layout of
selected
components could be changed here.
This could all be created in the build using the compiler to create the
XML manifest (see above). It would actually use the same type of logic I
have currently in the documentor I'm working on with Flacon.
I am not clear on this. Can you please elaborate? Are you talking about
re-opening a project in the design view? Or writing the properties to the
XML?
Oh I just meant that the XML that the compiler would generate, our
schema would have inspectable properties since we can read meatadata
and we would have the types. So when creating the property sheets in
the application, we wouldn't use reflection or anything, just the
loaded XML data that was compiled by the compiler pass.
5. Skins could be created/edited in the same way. They could also be
applied onto their corresponding Host Components as well.
6. Generate MXML: This is the part that I am unclear. My first thought
is to walk through the flash player display hierarchy and create an XML
containing all the components in the screen along with their properties
and
styles. Feed this primitive XML into Falcon (lots of hand-waving here)
which spits out MXML. This MXML can be edited in the IDE.
This I would be listening to others as to the best implementation but I
know we might be able to even target the compiler from inside the app right?
We could invoke an ant script or a batch file from within the AIR app that
triggers the compiler. Or even invoke the compiler directly as a
NativeProcess.
Ok, this sounds doable.
Bonus features:
1. Hooking up to Data services
2. Round-tripping between Design View <=> IDE
3. Writing Eclipse/IDEA plugins as wrappers around this AIR app so that
it
can be integrated into IDEs.
This would be very interesting, I never though about it this way if it's
possible.
The current design view in Flash Builder is implemented as an AIR app.
Look inside: \Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder
4.6\eclipse\plugins\com.adobe.flexbuilder.designview_4.6.0.328916
I have no idea how it is integrated into Eclipse as a view though. My best
bet is that the AIR runtime is invoked inside an Eclipse plugin. The AIR
runtime in turn invokes the design view air app.
Sounds like fun :-)
I would put time investigating this if I knew where to start looking.
Or if Adobe could give some pointers, what ever they figured it out so
we should be able to as well.
HAHA I can't believe I'm into this but, it does sound like fun and
seems like it would make some users/developers that are on the fence
happy down the road.
Since the code is open, would be a nice application showing the
implementation of the framework.
Alex, it might also be fun to plop your new component framework in for
some tests as well. ;-)
Mike
--
Michael Schmalle - Teoti Graphix, LLC
http://www.teotigraphix.com
http://blog.teotigraphix.com
