Towards dynamic GUI binding behavior

[ulikk]

Problem 1: Public bound variables have to be glued manually to angular in ui.coffee in a separate list.

Idea 1:

• add the Possibility to iterate over all PublishSubscriber channels (maybe with filtering to public: bindings) to PublishSubscriber
• make sure Angular Initialization happens after Painter Initialization
• replace the list = [ .. ] in ui.coffee to use the channels defined in the PublishSubscriber

---

Problem 2: Defaults allow only instantiation of simple Data types and no objects.

Idea 2:

• add an object instantiation mechanism to the defaults, together with the constructor parameters
• problem here: arrays will be interpreted as object instantiation

  defaults:
    ctr
    upmode: 'discrete'
    value: NaN
    lastValue: NaN
    cycle: 
       _CLASS: 'RandomIntervalNumber'
       _PARAMETERS: [ 20, 100 ]
       mode: 'regular'
       interval: 5

• Defaults will instantiate the object with the parameters and merge any additional values into that object

---

Problem 3: There is too much "glue" code between UI and application

Idea 3: Create "meta information" channels, lets call them "Metachannel" so that the UI can automatically build gui controls

Example: Interchangeable Movements for brushes, each with different parameter set

• e.g. a channel called "MovementParameters"
• Value of this channel is an array of objects that contain the type of the control and the channel it is bound to

[
  { type: textbox, channel: brushMinSize },
  { type: textbox, channel: brushMaxSize },
  ...
]

• The UI listens to this channel, and rebuilds the controls of this list if the list changes (for now only textboxes) and binds it to the specified channel (there is still the need for a appropriate connection to where to build these objects in the DOM/HTML)
• Metachannels are automatically created from the public: definiton

  public:
    _METACHANNEL: 'MovementParameters'
    brushMinSize:
       type: 'textbox'
       binding: 'sizem.value.min'
    brushMaxSize: 
      type: 'textbox'
      binding:'sizem.value.max'
    'movementChangeDirectionMin': 'delta._cycle.min'
    'movementChangeDirectionMax': 'delta._cycle.max'

• (if _METACHANNEL is defined, a metachannel for all objects that contain a type (brushMinSize in this example) is created
• Desired outcome: the object will change the metachannel content upon instantiation/initialization and automatically trigger a GUI change (and the appropriate bindings)
• if you have a better name for MetaChannel, let me know pls :-)

[juliankrispel]

Regarding Problem 3:

I propose a kind of type system, we could simply solve this problem by using names of classes, i.e. TUPLE, INT, RANGE.

[ulikk]

Problem 1 has been committed with e83898dc382550f79acb58246a3323e955369619 and 341f998626591f7a5b899291fc1da41541553890

[ulikk]

For Problem 2 i propose a somewhat shorter form:

  defaults:
    ctr
    upmode: 'discrete'
    value: NaN
    lastValue: NaN
    cycle: 
       _CLASS: [ 'RandomIntervalNumber', [ 20, 100 ] ]
       mode: 'regular'
       interval: 5

[ulikk]

Problem 2 was solved by extending base functionality so that default members can contain callback functions that instantiate the appropriate object.

class Mutable extends Base
defaults:
    ctr: 1
    upmode: 'discrete'
    value: NaN
    lastValue: NaN
    cycle: -> new RandomIntervalNumber(new Range(20,100))
...

One can also override the default by supplying an appropriate object upon instantiation through the Initializer Object given to the constructor:

    @sizem = new Mutable
      value: new RandomIntervalNumber new Range(2, 15)
      upmode: 'linp'
      cycle: new RandomIntervalNumber new Range(20, 100)