[Zope3-dev] a plan for widgets?

[Martijn Faassen]

Gary Poster wrote:
> 
> On Mar 17, 2006, at 4:08 AM, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> 
>> Gary Poster wrote:
[snip]
>> 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.

Yeah, I understand. :( Overall I'm glad you let us know and haven't been 
quiet, though.

> 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.

What are the prime motivators for doing what you'll do? I.e. beside 
having a cleaner widgets system, what are you trying to accomplish 
feature-wise?

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

Well, my personal priorities to work on this stuff have shifted now that 
I realize that there are indeed some significant changes are ahead. 
These incremental changes would be worthwhile if that was the only thing 
in the future. But we'd in fact have incremental changes that would be 
replaced entirely at some point in the future, which gives them only a 
limited utility.

I'm quite interested in knowing more about your plans, and helping you 
implement things, if only by porting existing widgets over to the new 
system. I also realize that discussing this kind of stuff over on the 
mailing list slows down the speed of implementation quite a bit, 
especially if there's a clear vision in your head of where it should go. 
But I still want to help. Ugh. Perhaps just drop me a line when you 
think I could be useful.

Maybe we should have a sprint where I can sit next to you? :)

Regards,

Martijn