On 12 January 2011 14:37, Richard Gaskin <ambassa...@fourthworld.com> wrote:
> If such metadata are needed for the variables, what would be the downside > of using an array? That way you could store/access the type metadata > quickly: > > put tData into gMyDucksA["label"]["data"] > put "rtfText" into gMyDucksA["label"]["type"] > > I realize that this is an obvious solution you've probably already > considered, but given the difficulties of imposing types and OOP constructs > in a typeless non-OOP language, for practical purposes such a > Lua-metatable-esque option may provide a reasonable balance between > performance and flexibility. > Yes - your right Richard. I'm being a perfectionist - or just really lazy - in fact both at the same time :) Seriously, I want to end up with full typed data specifications in an array format of the form you describe, but tailored to be useful for internal use, and XML export to things like Django templating language or XForm type encoding - internally there would be a standard array format that would work with datagrids and other form widgets. The duck typing is for the defaults - that's the lazy bit, and the bit that takes the most effort at the same time. In general I've found getting the defaults right for things like this to be both incredibly useful in terms of future usability and incredibly difficult to get right. The usability I'm looking for internally is simply to create simple arrays, from data in LiveCode and external files, and not bother about the type of data. The duck typing would simply fill in the defaults, which you can use to create default forms for displaying or editing the data - I think this should cover 90% of the cases - for the rest you would manually script the data types to allow for the appropriate form elements to be selected to display the data. Indeed you would manually refine the data in all sorts of ways. Does anyone know of any good widely used or well designed formats for form representation - Django, HTML5, DOJO, and XForms are the things I've investigated - I'm not too sure how much traction XForms gets, and if HTML5 forms makes it redundant - but ideally I'd like to borrow from well thought out data structure designs in other frameworks and know that it is possible to export the core LiveCode layouts for use in a range of web applications. _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
