Re: [boost] Re: GUI Library Proposal for a Proposal

From: Mathew Robertson (mathew.robertson_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-11-15 21:57:22

> > You have made a good point. I still feel uncomfortable about parsing header
> > files to determine type information. If header files were used, since
> > run-time reflection does not exist, one would have to inject the correct
> > code into source files based on design-time decisions. But it does seem as
> 
> I think reflection in general is very different from reflection for a GUI.
> 
> When you have a GUI control, you want to apply reflection for a few of 
> its properties. You won't have #ifdefs (or at least I would consider it 
> bad design). Case in point: its interface should be extremely simple and 
> easy to parse.
> 
> You shouldn't need complex information like reflection for virtual 
> functions, overloading etc.
> 
> Even reflected property types should be of trivial types:
> 1. build in types
> 2. std::string
> 3. types that can simply be read from /written to strings.
> 
> For case 3., you might also have a validation function which will be 
> used in design-mode to validate user input.
> 
> At least that's what I want.

I'm not sure that is valid.

Take a TreeList as an example.  The items in a treelist are almost always sub-classes, based on some type of generic 'TreeItem' class.  I'm not sure that a TreeItem can always be represented as a string.

Also, the position of a treeitem (within the treelist), may not necessarily be able to be stringified.

Mathew