[Zope3-dev] a plan for widgets?

[Gary Poster]

On Mar 17, 2006, at 4:08 AM, Martijn Faassen wrote:

> Gary Poster wrote:
[... snip already-answered question (thanks Roger)...]
>> Doing it in the "zc" namespace is intended to make no assumptions   
>> about what happens with zope.app.form; zc.widget probably will  
>> have  some backwards-compatibility with zope.app.form, but no  
>> dependencies.
>
> Hm, while redoing widgets to be better and presumably more capable  
> is definitely cool and interesting, some things have got me a bit  
> worried, in particular the "no public timeframe" and the need for  
> my projects to work with widgets.
>
> I have some questions about the new design - how fundamental is  
> this change to be? Will the widgets API change drastically

yes

> and will this require changes in formlib as well?

the current idea is that we will reuse the formlib API (the  
interfaces, maybe even the effective zope.formlib.form module  
interface) and as much of the formlib machinery as possible.

> Is this part of the backwards compatibility story? It doesn't sound  
> right if it is, as there would be no point to a new API if the  
> forms machinery would use the old one.

Correct.

> What also got me worried is that the promise of future new widgets  
> may result in the community doing very little for the time being.  
> We seemed to have a little bit of momentum to clean up  
> zope.app.form.browser, but this will now evaporate most likely. It  
> also potentially makes efforts like using Zope 3 widgets with Zope  
> 2 archetypes not very worthwhile right now, for instance.
>
> On the other hand, I can see why, if you have clear ideas about a  
> design, you'd want to develop this in isolation and move it to open  
> source later. But it still isn't positive for any community-driven  
> actions.
>
> What to do about this?

Maybe we should have just been quiet.  I expect this is one of those  
"damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't" moments.

The current backwards compatibility plan is that we'll provide an  
adapter to let zope.app.form-style widgets work in the new system to  
do the same kinds of things you can do with them now; you'll only  
need new widgets if you want to do new tricks with them.  Also, it's  
a goal that it will will be relatively easy to port an zope.app.form- 
style widget to our interfaces.

You also don't know if you'll like what we do.

Maybe these answers are motivation enough for some folks to continue  
with some of the projects you describe.

Gary