finally got all those copy / assgnment flavours straight.
Still unsolved: unable to instantiate the Variant template
for a type with private assignment operator (like e.g. Time )
The problem is our virtual assignement operator, which forces
instantiation of the implementation (for the VTable), even if
the actual assignment is never invoked.
- we do not want type mutations
- we do not want "empty" records ever
- we do not support "probing" for contents
- visitor style access for generic value handling
this was an immature first desgin attempt; we need a lightweight
Variant (typesafe union) implementation, so now is the time for
a second attempt. The existing Variant is used only once, and this
usage as such is in a questionable context, likely to be reworked
when we actually start coding up the builder. So I'll just move
it away and mark it @deprecated for the time being.
After some reconsideration, I decide to stick to the approach with the closures,
but to use a metaprotramming technique to build an inheritance chain.
While I can not decide on the real world impact of storing all those closures,
in theory this approach should enable the compiler to remove all of the
storage overhead. Since, when storing the result into an auto variable
right within scope (as demonstrated in the test), the compiler
sees the concrete type and might be able to boil down the actual
generated virtual function implementations, thereby inlining the
given closures.
Whereas, on the other hand, if we'd go the obvious conventional route
and place the closures into a Map allocated on the stack, I wouldn't
expect the compiler to do data flow analysis to prove this allocation
is not necessary and inline it away.
NOTE: there is now guarantee this inlining trick will ever work.
And, moreover, we don't know anything regarding the runtime effect.
The whole picture is way more involved as it might seem at first sight.
Even if we go the completely conventional route and require every
participating object to supply an implementation of some kind of
"Serializable" interface, we'll end up with a (hand written!)
implementation class for each participating setup, which takes
up space in the code segment of the executable. While the closure
based approach chosen here, consumes data segment (or heap) space
per instance for the functors (or function pointers) representing
the closures, plus code segment space for the closures, but the
latter with a way higher potential for inlining, since the closure
code and the generated virtual functions are necessarily emitted
within the same compilation unit and within a local (inline, not
publickly exposed) scope.
so yes, it is complicated, and inevitably involves three layers
of indirection. The alternative seems to bind the GUI direcly to
the Session interface -- is there a middle gound?
For the messages from GUI to Proc, we have our commands, based
on PlacementRef entities. But for feeding model updates to the
GUI, whatever I consider, I end up either with diff messages or
an synchronised access to Session attributes, which ties the
responsiveness of the GUI to the Builder operation.
There is a long-standing RfC which basically describes the
same idea on a much wider, conceptual scope. Indeed I consider
this approach used here for solving the problem with GUI uptades
also as a proof of concept, to be expanded to a much wider scope
in case it works out well.
The new insight here is, that, by transferring a diff in pull mode,
we can circumvent the architectural problems with typing, which
showed up quite clearly in earlier design studies towards this
concept. The change from push to pull is by far not so fundamental
as it looks, since the sender still may initiate the exchange
by sending a message offering the diff iterator for the receiver
to pull. This way, we get a handshake and still sustain the
crucial part, which is to decouple the data representation
and give the receiver full control over the interpretation
of the exchanged data.
- we use a GenNode element
- this holds a polymorphic value known as DataCap
- besides simple attribute values, this may hold collections of GenNode sub elements
- a special kind of GenNode collection, the Record, is used to represent objects
The purpose of this setup is to enable an external model representation
which is only loosely coupled to the interndal data representation
through the exchange of (tree)diff messages
previously this operation was named 'attach', which an be confused
with attching an object to this location. Indeed, the session interface
even offers such an attach function. By renaming the focus moving
operation into QueryFocus::shift(Scope), this ambiguity is resolved
This is the first step towards a generic backbone to connect
any GUI elements to the session within Proc-Layer.
It is based on a spefic understanding of Model-View-Controller,
which turns the Model-Controller interactions into messages.
Remove some orphaned diagrams and PNG images not actually used
in the TiddlyWiki. Add a page with some hints regarding Bouml
See also #960 -- Bouml has been discontinued and is closed source now
not sure how to proceed with this
sans the implementation of the index lookup table(s)
The algorithm is KISS, a variant of insertion sort, i.e.
worst time quadratic, but known to perform well on small data sets.
The mere generation of the diff description is O(n log n), since
we do not verify that we can "find" out of order elements. We leave
this to the consumer of the diff, which at this point has to scan
into the rest of the data sequence (leading to quadratic complexity)
finally....
The problem is that the C++ "dependent types" defeat the typical
DSL usage, where you define some helper function in a generic
language setup class and mix this language in as superclass.
This is, C++ requires us to refer explicitly to any dependent type,
since, due to possible template specialisations, the parser
can't know if a given symbol is a inherited type or a field.
As a solution, we place the token constructor functors into a
static struct "token", which allows to write e.g. token.insert(xyz)
As decided in beb57cde
this changeset switches our basic list diff language to work
in the style of an insertion sort. Rather than 'pushing back'
out-of-order elements, we scan and bring forward missing elements.
Later, when passing the original location of the elements
fetched this way, a 'skip' verb will help to clean up
possible leftowers, so implementation is possible
(and indeed acomplished) without shifting any other elements.
and this adds a twist: conceptually, we identify the token
with the abstract handler function it represents. But C++
does not allow us to compare member pointers to virtual functions,
for good reason: even two pointers with the "same offset" into
the VTable might end up referring to different implementations,
when bound to instances of different subclasses. This is what
polymorphism is all about.
At this point it seems reasonably, albeit a bit uggly, to use the
diagnostic ID as placeholder instead, and just compare these IDs
instead. We assume that in practice tokens will be defined through
the provided helper macro, which ensures unique identifiers.
This means to discontinue any research into emitting an optimal
diff verb sequence for now and just to document the possible path
I see to reach at such a optimal solution later, when it turns out
to be really necessary performance wise.
Personal note: I arrived at this conclusion while whatching the
New Year fireworks 2014/2015 at the banks of the Isar river in
the centre of the city.
Too sad that 2014 didn't bring us World War III
