[OpenAjaxIDE] Bootstrapping
Jon Ferraiolo
jferrai at us.ibm.com
Wed Oct 24 05:47:16 PDT 2007
One more thing - we have to be careful about which definition of "widget"
we are talking about. The W3C Widgets spec talks about an installable
mini-application that gets launched from the mobile desktop. Within a W3C
Widget might be UI controls (another use of the word "widget").
This WG is focused on UI controls, not mini-applications such as what you
see in W3C Widgets. Clearly, there is overlap, but the workflows are quite
a bit different. For example, maybe you want to create a W3C Widget using
some UI controls from Ajax libraries, such as tree widgets, toolbars, combo
boxes, things like that. You might use an IDE to pull together those UI
controls. That's where this WG comes in. The Gadgets TF deals with latter
processes after the assembly has been made and the result is exported as a
"Gadget".
Jon
Jonathan
Bond-Caron
<jbondc at gdesoluti To
ons.com> ide at openajax.org
Sent by: cc
ide-bounces at opena
jax.org Subject
Re: [OpenAjaxIDE] Bootstrapping
10/24/2007 05:05
AM
Please respond to
jbondc at gdesolutio
ns.com
I agree with all points though I'm also uneasy about the naming.
As a convention, something like the following could be interesting:
Ms:
OpenAjaxLib.xml -> ms.library.xml
OpenAjaxWidget.xml -> ms.toolkit.PasswordStrength.xml
OpenAjaxAPI.xml -> ms.toolkit.PasswordStrength.api.xml OR?
ms.toolkit.PasswordStrength.doc.xml
Spry:
OpenAjaxLib.xml -> spry.library.xml
OpenAjaxWidget.xml -> spry.widgets.Tooltip.xml
OpenAjaxAPI.xml -> spry.widgets.Tooltip.api.xml OR?
spry.widgets.Tooltip.doc.xml
...
I was happily surprised by the w3c widgets draft and how they plan to deal
with widget 'resources':
http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/#widget0
Somewhere along these line, it would be nice to allow automatic discovery
by reading the library’s xml or unpacking a container and
discovering new required resources.
i.e. Based on ooa registry?
<resource Id="YAHOO" type="library" uri="file://YAHOO/YAHOO.library.xml" />
<resource Id="Spry" type="library" uri="
file://Spry/Spry.library.xml" />
<resource Id="ms" type="library" uri="http://somewhere/ms.library.zip" />
From: ide-bounces at openajax.org [mailto:ide-bounces at openajax.org] On
Behalf Of Rich Thompson
Sent: October 23, 2007 4:54 PM
To: ide at openajax.org
Subject: Re: [OpenAjaxIDE] Bootstrapping
I too would prefer to not start by doing separations where we do not
have well developed reasons for the distinctions. It is likely some
such distinctions will arise as we move forward and that seems like
the appropriate time to separate the information.
I also wonder about an approach that seems to be focused on a
downloaded directory structure. In particular I'm concerned about how
it maps to a web widget model. What about more of a URI approach
where "discovering" the widget/component/library means one has been
handed a defined set of metadata. This could be by ingesting the
response from a URI or by reading a file. If it makes sense to
partition the metadata, this top level set can point to other
metadata (and thereby also support deferred loading of unused
information ...).
Rich Thompson
From: Bertrand Le Roy <Bertrand.Le.Roy at microsoft.com>
To: Jon Ferraiolo/Menlo Park/IBM at IBMUS
Cc: "ide at openajax.org" <ide at openajax.org>
Date: 10/23/2007 04:35 PM
Subject: Re: [OpenAjaxIDE] Bootstrapping
Well, it’s also still not clear to me why we need different formats
for lib, api and widgets. What’s the difference between lib and api?
From: Jon Ferraiolo [mailto:jferrai at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 1:27 PM
To: Bertrand Le Roy
Cc: ide at openajax.org
Subject: RE: [OpenAjaxIDE] Bootstrapping
Bertand,
Does your response mean that everything else in my email is good? I
assume that the answer is no, and that your response represents only
the subset of things you could think of at the moment. In any case,
it would be good if you and others could respond with what parts
sounded good and which ones didn't.
Thanks.
Jon
Inactive hide details for Bertrand Le Roy
<Bertrand.Le.Roy at microsoft.com>Bertrand Le Roy <
Bertrand.Le.Roy at microsoft.com>
Bertrand Le Roy <
Bertrand.Le.Roy at microsof
t.com>
10/23/2007 01:18 PM
To
Jon Ferraiolo/Menlo Park/IBM at IBMUS,
"ide at openajax.org" <
ide at openajax.org>
cc
Subject
RE: [OpenAjaxIDE] Bootstrapping
A few points:
· I’m a little uneasy about having the name OpenAjax (or even
something generic such as metadata) as the file name because if the
file gets separated from the library or gets out of the folder, you
can’t guess what’s in there without opening it. I’d prefer a
convention that is a variation of the library’s file name. i.e.
prototype.js -> prototype.metadata.xml
· We shouldn’t force people to put different libraries in different
folders if they don’t want to.
· The file should be discoverable from the directory where the file
sits as well as from some central directory on the file system that’s
determined by the IDE itself. This enables web authors to not have
the metadata file pollute the web site if they don’t want it there.
From: ide-bounces at openajax.org [mailto:ide-bounces at openajax.org] On
Behalf Of Jon Ferraiolo
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 12:52 PM
To: ide at openajax.org
Subject: [OpenAjaxIDE] Bootstrapping
(I'm only sending this to ide at openajax.org because this is mostly
centered on IDE workflows, not mashup workflows, although this
proposal does attempt to address some of the expected requirements
from the Gadgets TF)
We have looked at various grammars (XML, JSON and JSDoc) for
representing library metadata (APIs and widgets). At our last phone
call, there was a sense that we would be able to take the best
features from each of the proposals such that we could define a
unified XML grammar that might address all of our requirements. This
is all good.
My question today is how does it all get bootstrapped (i.e.,
discovered, loaded, initialized)? Let's assume we have an IDE and two
Ajax libaries, "A" and "B". How does the IDE discover A and B, make
them available to the IDE, and how does it find (or possibly
auto-generate) the XML metadata files that describe the APIs and
widgets?
Here is one approach that might work:
1) An Ajax library is assumed to have a root folder, and everything
needed by the library descends from that root folder. It is assumed
that the IDE "discovers" a given library either because the library
ships with the IDE or the library can be imported into the IDE
somehow (post-installation), and the key thing that the IDE needs to
know is the name of the root folder for the library.
2) To bootstrap library metadata, a file named OpenAjaxLib.xml file
SHOULD exist in the root folder. This file provides overall metadata
about the library (e.g., version#). But note the word "SHOULD". It is
OK if OpenAjaxLib.xml is separate from the library, in which case the
IDE will need to collect the metadata some other way, such as prompt
the user provide the location of the OpenAjaxLib.xml file.
3) API metadata and widget metadata can be scattered around the
directory structure. Assume that the IDE will recursively search
through directories to find those files. No need for a master
manifest file, which is difficult to keep up to date. We simply have
to come up with a standard filename for the metadata files, such as
OpenAjaxAPI.xml and OpenAjaxWidget.xml. (Note: we might provide an
optimization feature in OpenAjaxLib.xml where explicit search paths
could be defined and the toolkit developer can choose different names
than OpenAjaxAPI.xml and OpenAjaxWidget.xml)
4) We make sure that OpenAjaxAPI.xml can be generated dynamically by
the IDE through a just-in-time transformation (e.g., transforming
MS's inline XML annotations into OpenAjaxAPI.xml or transforming
JSDoc inline annotations into OpenAjaxAPI.xml)
5) We attempt to define the format for OpenAjaxWidget.xml such that:
a) it can be used to serve all common definitions for "widget"
(WUI=UI controls, WMASH=Mashup widgets, WDASH=Installable desktop
gadgets such as Dashboard)
b) we make sure there are lossless transformations to/from selected
existing WMASH and WDASH widgets formats (e.g., Apple Dashboard,
Google Universal Gadgets)
6) Allow OpenAjaxWidget.xml to include API definitions that apply to
the given widget. Therefore, inside of OpenAjaxWidget.xml there might
be tags from OpenAjaxAPI.xml.
Relationship to the proposals from Adobe, Aptana, and MS, plus also
jMaki:
a) OpenAjaxWidget.xml should be largely analogous to jMaki's
widget.json file, but needs to (roughly) support the union of
features from Adobe's proposals and IBM's proposal to the Gadget's
TF, plus offer an extensibility approach such that a rich UI system
like dijit could embrace this format down the road. (Not saying that
dijit should do this, but the format should allow this as a future
possibility.)
b) OpenAjaxAPI.xml should be extensible in a manner that address's MS
needs for supporting other languages. (As we discussed at the last
phone call.)
c) Under the extensibility veneer per (b), the description of
JavaScript APIs probably should look a lot like Aptana's markup
language
Bottom line, my thinking today is that we need 3 different formats,
OpenAjaxLib.xml, OpenAjaxAPI.xml and OpenAjaxWidget.xml.
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