Re: Patch to custom object: object-specific properties (preliminary)

[Cyrille Chepelov <cyrille chepelov org>]

Le Mon, Nov 17, 2003, Ã 04:15:19PM +0100, Marco Contenti a Ãcrit:

> > A little worry about your patch: at one point, you are making a switch
> > based on the type of the property, and then making assumptions about the
> > sizeof(property data). This has the big inconvenient to me of increasing
> > the coupling between the Custom object and the StdProp library. Would it
> > be possible to factor this into StdProp itself instead?
> I would be glad to use a function telling me the size of property data given
> the type, if there is one. I'm sorry I am no Dia expert. I didn't even know
> that Dia existed until three weeks ago, so I chose to limit the damage I can
> do to the Custom object plug-in only, not involoving libdia.

I think that you are right that this function may not exist right now;
but it belongs to there.

> Also, the StdProp library source code is about an order of magnitude bigger
> and pretty undocumented, except for the few notes I read on the wiki at
> faemalia.org, therefore I'm a bit afraid of touching it.
> I have some unanswered questions about StdProp, among others:
> - Is there a complete list of available types?
> - What are SARRAY and DARRAY and how can I use them?

these are static "S" and dynamic "D" arrays of properties. This is done
for compound nested nasty properties, intended for the big
StdPropisation of "UML - Class", but to date few people dared actually
use this code.

> - "composite" is just an XML tag and has nothing to do with StdProp, am I
> right?

Mmmm. I'm not sure I understand what you mean here.

> - Is there a (standard) way to edit a group of properties in a separate
> window or page?

Not that I know of. Right now, the only time a group of properties are
edited is when the property dialog is brought up, so the StdProp
machinery may not be invoked with the cleanest interface.

        -- Cyrille

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