customizing widgets in collect

Currently, if a person wishes to use a
custom widget they have two options :

1. Edit the codebases of JavaRosa and ODK to permit them to signify a
custom widget be used based on a form specification.
2. Edit ODK to override a widget responsible for a given data type

    Either of those options requires that people derivate their own
project from the main in order to use a customized control widget. I'm
proposing logic be put in place in order to permit third party control
widgets be loaded without requiring that JavaRosa or ODK be modified.
    Not only is the requirement to split from the main undesirable,
but if the widget for a given data type is overridden then it is
applied as the control for every question requiring an answer of that
data type. The proposed modifications allows for widgets to be
generated either by the traditional method or via additional meta data
specifying a widget for a specific question. Actually, if incorporated
into the main, the system that I've written could allow for all
questions of a given data type to use a custom widget without
modifying and recompiling ODK Collect after a few modification to the
proof-of-concept.
    A very preliminary proof of concept is in place at the following
URL
http://code.google.com/p/open-data-kit/source/browse/#svn/branches/hrc/odk-colle
ct-
customwidgets

Original issue reported on code.google.com by yanokwa on 29 Apr 2010 at 10:25

newtonandebe / opendatakit

customizing widgets in collect #45