This finishes the first round of design drafts in this area.
Right now it seems difficult to get any further, since most of
the actual view creation and management in the UI is not yet coded.
looks like I'm trapped with the choice between a convoluted API design
and an braindead and inefficient implementation. I am leaning towards the latter
looks like we're hitting a design mismatch here....
...and unfortunately I have to abandon this task now and concentrate
on preparation of my talk at LAC.2018 in June
it seems apropriate to move the base definition of gui::idi::Descriptor<VIEW>
into view-spec-dsl.hpp and only retain the actual DSL definitions in id-scheme.hpp
The original goal for #1129 (ViewSpecDSL_test) is impossible to accomplish,
at least within our existing test framework. Thus I'll limit myself to coding
a clean-room integration test with purely synthetic DSL definitions and mock widgets
My understanding is that in the standard use case, we precisely know what to expect
and just go ahead and perform the conversion. Thus it is pointless to introduce
fine grained distinctions. When the access fails, this always indicates some broken
application logic, and just raises an error.
With this solution, somewhere deep down within the implementation
the knowledge about the actual result type would be encoded into
the embedded VTable within a lib::variant. At interface level,
ther will be a double dispatch based on that result type
and the desired result type, leading either to a successful
access or an error response.
Problem is, we can not even compile the conversion in the "other branch".
Thus we need to find some way to pick the suitable branch at compile time.
Quite similar to the solution found for binding Rec<GenNode> onto a typed Tuple
...reduce immediate coupling, since we do not really now what actions ElementAccess
will actually perform, and this is likely to remain this way for some time.
So just let it sit there are an on-demand dependency.
Moreover, create an (empty placeholder) implementation within WindowLocator.
So everything is set now for the actual implementation to be filled in
Attempt to find my way back to the point
where the digression regarding dependency-injection started.
As it turns out, this was a valuable digression, since we can rid ourselves
from lots of ad-hoc functionality, which basically does in a shitty way
what DependencyFactory now provides as standard solution
FIRST STEP is to expose the Navigator as generic "LocationQuery" service
through lib::Depend<LocationQuery>
from now on, we'll have dedicated individual translation units (*cpp)
for each distinct interface proxy. All of these will include the
interfaceproxy.hpp, which now holds the boilerplate part of the code
and *must not be included* in anything else than interfac proxy
translation units. The reason is, we now *definie* (with external linkage)
implementations of the facade::Link ctor and dtor for each distinct
type of interface proxy. This allows to decouple the proxy definition code
from the service implementation code (which is crucial for plug-ins
like the GUI)
The recently rewritten lib::Depend front-end for service dependencies,
together with the configuration as lib::DependInject::ServiceInstance
provides all the necessary features and is even threadsafe.
Beyond that, the expectation is that also the instantiation of the
interface proxies can be simplified. The proxies themselves however
need to be hand-written as before
SingletonRef was only invented because lib::Depend (or lib::Singleton at that time)
offered only on-demand initialisation, but could not attach to an external service.
But this is required for calling out at the implementation side of a
Lumiera Interface into the actual service implementation.
The recently created DependInject::ServiceInstance now fulfils this task way better
and is seamlessly integrated into the lib::Depend front-end
we'll use a typedef to represent the default case
and provide the level within the UI-Tree as template parameter for the generic case
This avoids wrapping each definition into a builder function, which will be
the same function for 99% of the cases, and it looks rather compact and natural
for the default case, while still retaining genericity.
Another alternative would have been to inject the Tree-level at the invocation;
but doing so feels more like magic for me.
decided to add a very specific preprocessing here, to make the DSL notation more natural.
My guess is that most people won't spot the presence of this tiny bit of magic,
and it would be way more surprising to have rules like
UICoord::currentWindow().panel("viewer").create()
fail in most cases, simply because there is a wildcard on the perspective
and the panel viewer does not (yet) exist. In such a case, we now turn the
perspective into a "existential quantified" wildcard, which is treated as if
the actually existing element was written explicitly into the pattern.
util::contains used to pick the overload for strings,
i.e. it first converted the UI-Coordinates to diagnostic output format
and then searched that string for '*' to determine if the pattern is explicit
works as expected, but not what you'd intend....
...and breaks spectacularly once you search for something as innocuous as '.'
when used in a pattern for matching against the UI tree,
an element marked as UIC_ELIDED = "." is treated as existentially quantified.
This means, we assume / verify there *is* an element at that level,
but we do not care about what this element actually is. Within the
implementation, the handling is similar to a wildcard, yet such a
spec is not classified as a wildcard (it *is* an explicit element,
just not explicitly named).
The relevant consequence is that such an element matches at a leaf
position, while match on wildcards on leaf positions is prohibited,
to prevent arbitrary and nonsensical wildcard matches against
open ended patterns. Especially we need such an existential pattern
to express a rule to create elements from scratch, but within a
specific window with arbitrary (but existing) perspective.
turns out to be somewhat tricky.
The easy shot would be to use the comma operator,
but I don't like that idea, since in logic programming, comma means "and then".
So I prefer an || operator, similar to short-circuit evaluation of boolean OR
Unfortunately, OR binds stronger than assignment, so we need to trick our way
into a smooth DSL syntax by wrapping into intermediary marker types, and accept
rvalue references only, as additional safeguard to enforce the intended inline
definition syntax typical for DSL usage.
seems to be the most orthogonal way to strip adornments from the SIG type
Moreover, we want to move the functor into the closure, where it will be stored anyay.
From there on, we can pass as const& into the binder (for creating the partially closed functor)
...as it turned out, the result type was the problem: the lambda we provide
typically does not yield an Allocator, but only its baseclass function<UICoord(UICoord)>
solution: make Allocator a typedef, we don't expect any further functionality
...but not yet able to get it to compile.
Problem seems to be the generic lambda, which is itself a template.
Thus we need a way to instantiate that template with the correct arguments
prior to binding it into a std::function
been there, seen that recently (-> TreeExplorer, the Expander had a similar problem)
...this was quite an extensive digression, which basically gave us
a solid foundation for topological addressing and pattern matching
within the "interface space"
rationale: sometimes (likely this is even the standard case) we do not just
want to "extend", rather we want to extent at very specific levels.
This is easy to implement, based on the existing building blocks for path manipulation
the original construction works only as long as we stick to the "classical" Builder syntax,
i.e. use chained calls of the builder functions. But as soon as we just invoke
some builder function for sake of the side-effect on the data within the builder,
this data is destroyed and moved out into the value return type, which unfortunately
is being thrown away right afterwards.
Thus: either make a builder really sideeffect-free, i.e. do each mutation
on a new copy (which is kind of inefficient and counterfeits the whole idea)
or just accept the side-effect and return only a reference.
In this case, we can still return a rvalue-Reference, since at the end
we want to move the product of the build process out into the destination.
This works only due to the C++ concept of sequence points, which ensures
the original object stays alive during the whole evaluation of such a chained
builder expression.
NOTE: the TreeMutator (in namespace lib::diff) also uses a similar Builder construction,
but in *that* case we really build a new product in each step and thus *must*
return a value object, otherwise the reference would already be dangling the
moment we leave the builder function.
- the default should be to look for total coverage
- the predicates should reflect the actual state of the path only
- the 'canXXX' predicates test for possible covering mutation
I set out to "discover" what operations we actually need on the LocationQuery
interface, in order to build a "coordinate resolver" on top. It seems like
this set of operations is clear by now.
It comes somewhat as a surprise that this API is so small. This became possible
through the idea of a ''child iterator'' with the additional ability to delve down and
expand one level of children of the current element. Such can be ''implemented''
by relying on techniques similar to the "Monads" from functional programming.
Let's see if this was a good choice. The price to pay is a high level of ''formal precision''
when dealing with the abstraction barrier. We need to stick strictly to the notion of a
''logical path'' into a tree-like topology, and we need to be strong enough never to
give in and indulge with "the concrete, tangible". The concrete reality of a tree
processing algorithm with memory management plus backtracking is just to complex
to be handled mentally. So either stick to the rules or get lost.
yet some more trickery to get around this design problem.
I just do not want to rework IterSource right now, since this will be
a major change and require more careful consideration.
Thus introduce a workaround and mark it as future work
Using this implementation, "child expansion" should now be possible.
But we do not cover this directly in Unit test yet
we need to layer our Navigator implementation on top,
since this object needs to capture a reference to the "current position".
This is necessary to be able to derive the child position by extending
and then to form a child navigator -- which is the essence of
implementing expandChildren()
...but not yet switched into the main LocationQuery interface,
because that would also break the existing implementation;
recasting this implementation is the next step to do....
NOTE it just type checks right now,
but since meta programming is functional programming, this means
with >90% probability that it might actually work this way....
...which also happens to include sibling and child iteration;
this is an attempt to reconcile the inner contradictions of the design
(we need both absolute flexibility for the type of each child level iterator
yet we want just a single, generic iterator front-end)
...this was a difficult piece of consideration and analysis.
In the end I've settled down on a compromise solution,
with the potential to be extended into the right direction eventually...
Since this now requires to import iter-adapter-stl.hpp and iter-source.hpp
at the same time, I decided to drop the convenience imports of the STL adapters
into namespace lib. There is no reason to prefer the IterSource-based adapters
over the iter-adapter-stl.hpp variants of the same functionality.
Thus better always import them explicitly at usage site.
...actual implementation of the planned IterSource packaging is only stubbed.
But I needed to redeclare a lot of ctors, which doesn't seem logical
And I get a bad function invocation from another test case which worked correct beforehand.
This can be seen as a side track, but the hope is
by relying on some kind of monadic evaluation pattern, we'll be
able to to reconcile the IterExplorer draft from 2012 with the requirement
to keep the implementation of "tree position" entirely opaque.
The latter is mandatory in the use case here, since we must not intermingle
the algorithm to resolve UI-coordinates in any way with the code actually
navigating and accessing GTK widgets. Thus, we're forced to build some kind
of abstraction barrier, and this turns out to be surprisingly difficult.
...which was deliberately represented in an asymmetric way, to verify the
design's ability to cope with such implementation intricacies. So basically
we have to kick in at LEVEL == 1 and access the implementation differently.
This exercise just shows again, that treating tree structures recursively
is the way to go, and we should do similar when coding up the query-API
for the real GTK toolkit based window elements...
this fixes a silly mistake:
obviously we want named sub-nodes, aka. "Attributes",
but we used the anonymous sub-nodes instead, aka. "Children"
Incidentally, this renders the definitions also way more readable;
in fact the strange post-fix naming notation of the original version
was a clear indication of using the system backwards....
