Comments on forms package

>BTW: While you seem to think a lot these days ;-) if you have any
>other serious design flaws to mention, it is really the right time to
>speak up.
>
>Anselm.

I hope it's not to late to say few words about forms package. This is
a result of my work these days.

First, class members have a too restricted access. I mean on data 
members and contructors in first line. For example, if I want to
extend FormCardResource, my class must be a part of the w3c.jigsaw.forms
package. I don't like that because I want to separate my classes from
w3c distribution. Just practical reasons. Otherwise, if I put my
forms resources in some other package I can't access to data members. :(
Everything is needed is to make data members and constructor protected.

Second, I think that FormFieldInterface and FormField should have 
methods for mutiple values fileds:

	public Object getValues();
	public boolean setValues( String nvals[] );

or some equivalent interface. Handle method in FormCardResource also 
does
not have support for multiple value fields. That shouldn't be problem to
implement. Now, I can extend handle method and support it, but form
field doesn't have propper interface (or I'm missing something). It can
be done with hacking, but I would rather see this in standard jigsaw 
release.

At the end, I think that dump method in ...Field classes should not
dump "th" tags, even Title. That's a job for a someone else (class
extended form HtmlGenerator or dump method in FormCardResource). Dump
method in field should dump just it self. It looks that current
implementations of dumps are adapted for property editor resources.

Rade.

Received on Friday, 23 August 1996 07:54:36 UTC