Tidy up window.signals name and enforce a policy on listeners' names

[CosmoMyzrailGorynych]

Tidy up the mess with global event listeners, aka window.signals. There should be a logical and obvious naming system, an accessible list of names of existing events, and triggers set up on generic asset changes and UI events.

window.signals (WIP)

Intention of window.signals

window.signals must only be used to update views of directly edited entities and those entities that use others as is. For example,

• texture is changed and saved in UI;
• a call to node_requires/resources/textures is made to update texture asset in FS (file system);
• textureUpdated is fired with the new texture's JSON object, as well as assetUpdated;
• a type editor and room editor may or may not update themselves to redraw preview by listening to textureUpdated and filtering the results.

But also consider this:

• a user deletes a texture in UI;
• a call to node_requires/resources/textures is made to delete the texture from the FS;
• a hook goes through all the resources that reference this texture;
• any affected assets are modified and trigger assetUpdated, as well as {x}Updated relevant to their asset type;
• asset viewer may be updated by listening to and filtering {x}Updated events (say a type has lost its texture and its thumbnail needs to be refreshed).
• currently opened asset editors which assets were changed get updated by listening to and filtering {x}Updated events;
• textureDeleted and assetDeleted are triggered.
• asset viewer gets updated by listening to and filtering assetDeleted event.

Asset viewers must not patch their assets by themselves due to changes in dependencies.

Handling changes coming both from a user and dependency hooks

Users may be editing an asset that gets patched by a hook that resolves missing asset dependencies. Before making patches, window.orders.trigger('saveAsset') is called to forcefully save an asset if it is opened in an asset viewer.

Operations upon assets

These events must be triggered only from the node_requires/resources directory. All the CRUD logic also lies here.

For each asset type, these events must be generated (using texture as an example here):

• [x] textureCreated
• [x] textureUpdated
• [x] textureDeleted
• [x] textureMoved

These events are for updates between different entities. Any asset type also emits these events:

• [x] assetCreated
• [x] assetUpdated
• [x] assetDeleted
• [x] assetMoved

These events are mainly for the asset viewer. All the events pass two arguments: the changed js object and a path to an asset file. assetRenamed also passes the old path as its third argument.

Move operations are counted as assetRenamed.

UI events

• [ ] assetOpened — when a user opened an asset or switches a tab to it. Passes the type of the asset and full path to it as its arguments.
• [ ] ideFocused
• [ ] ideBlurred
• [ ] debuggerStarted
• [ ] debuggerStopped
• [x] projectLoaded — is it even a UI event? Anyways, it is needed.

window.orders (WIP)

While window.signals is used for read-only operations in UI, window.orders may be used to forcefully trigger some events in asset editors.

• [ ] saveAllAssets
• [ ] saveAsset — has a path to the asset as its only argument. Orders to save a currently edited asset, if it is opened.
• [ ] openAsset — has a path to the asset as its only argument. Creates a new tab or focuses on the existing one. This may be called from asset editors to quickly jump between dependent entities.

[stale[bot]]

Hey there 👋 I marked this issue as stale as it hadn't brought much attention for quite a while. I do understand that stale issues are still issues, yet here stale issues receive the least attention from maintainers so they can focus on more relevant tasks. You can help with this issue by checking whether it affects latest versions of ct.js and writing about it if it does, providing an example project and steps to reproduce. Or maybe you can close it with a PR! Note that some platform-dependent issues can't be resolved by developers due to the absense of such devices :c We will need help from you for such tasks. If this issue won't get attention in three months, it will be closed.

[stale[bot]]

This issue is now closed! Please create a new one with a proper template if this issue still affects ct.js.