[boost] Re: Re: Javascript Tree Control [was: Serialization Menu]

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-30 22:19:31

"Rene Rivera" <grafik.list_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
news:410B0839.1030106_at_redshift-software.com...
> Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
>

> >
> > I'd love synchronization to be automatic but I just don't see how
to
> > do it.
>
> It's possible but only if you invert the relation between the frames
and
> the documents. If instead of making a frameset with the tree and the
> document you could instead make the document inline the tree frame
> inside the document page and hence the URL would always be direct
(using
> iframe tag). This might be contrary to one of the intrusion
principles,
> but it would solve the problem.

Thanks. I actually think the docs would look better with the tree in
the same frame as the content. Here are the problems I see:

   1. Intrusive (as you say)
   2. When viewing a long html document the tree may scroll out of
view. It's possible to make it float back into view automatically, but
I find this very annoying.
   3. The whole tree has to reload each time you visit a new page.
This could be a problem with big trees -- say if a library author
wants to add tree nodes for each function, class and concept in a
large library.
   4. In browsers which understand a little javascript but not enough
to display the tree dynamically, the html for the tree is output using
document.write(). In old browsers this sometimes obliterates the rest
of the content of the document, or puts the newly written stuff at the
bottom or the top. These old browsers behave very differently -- it
was a bit of a challenge to get them to all display the same thing. So
if I go this route I'll have to reimplement the tree so that the HTML
is statically generated, as in the serialization docs.

1 and 3 seem like the biggest problems to me. 1 would be solved if the
docs were automatically generated. Any suggestions?

Jonathan