RE: [cgmo-webcgm] Re: The highlight() method

["Galt, Stuart A" <stuart.a.galt@boeing.com>]

Hello,

I think that the ability to apply a highlight to a single item is an
important
feature to have.  My first thought was to overload the argument list,
but 
that is not allowed by ecmascript (or javascript).  So my thoughts
turned
to something along the lines of option 4.  Can I either create a list 
on the fly or can I dereference an existing list?

creation on the fly would require something like:
var aps = pic.getAppStructureById("apsToHighlight");
pic.highlight(aps.makeNodeList(), true);

and dereferencing the list would look something like:
var list = pic.getAppStructuresByName("listToHighlight");
pic.highlight( list.items(), true );

I think that the dereference option would work because you can
have a variable number of arguments in a function.  Either one
of these would require changes to support.  I think that the
first has the advantage that all the existing scripts would
continue to work...

I am not sure that I understand the problem of the live node
view of the DOM.

A kludge workaround would be to be get the object by id and then
get a list of objects that share the same name.  You then iterate
through the list removing items that do not have the id that you
want... (Ugly but can be done)

I cannot speak to which version of the spec highlighting should 
be fixed.
  



--
Stuart Galt
SGML Resource Group
stuart.a.galt@boeing.com
(206) 544-3656  <--- new number! 


-----Original Message-----
From: Benoit Bezaire [mailto:benoit@itedo.com] 
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 7:42 AM
To: cgmo-webcgm@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [cgmo-webcgm] Re: The highlight() method

I haven't heard from anyone regarding this one either? Your comments
would be appreciated.

-- 
 Benoit   mailto:benoit@itedo.com

 
Friday, November 25, 2005, 10:54:57 AM, you wrote:

> Hi,

>   Itedo noticed that the highlight() method on the Picture interface
>   may be problematic.

>   The prototype is:
>   void highlight(in WebCGMNodeList nodes, in boolean state);

>   The method works for the following script:
>   var list = pic.getAppStructuresByName("listToHighlight");
>   pic.highlight( list, true );

>   however, the following code is invalid:
>   var aps = pic.getAppStructureById("apsToHighlight");
>   pic.highlight( aps, true );

>   getAppStructureById returns a WebCGMNode, not a WebCGMNodeList, doh!

>   Here are some options that we have:
>   i) leave it like this, fix in a later version (2.1) but that means
>   WebCGM 2.0 users will not be able to highlight a single Application
>   Structures.

>   ii) change getAppStructureById to return a WebCGMNodeList. This
>   however will force script writers to write:
>   var id = pic.getAppStructureById("myID");
>   if( id.count > 0 )
>   {
>      id.item(0). etc...
>   }
>   every time they want to access and APS by Id.

>   iii) have two highlight methods. One that is called highlight(
>   takes a WebCGMNode ) and one called highlightMany( takes a
>   WebCGMNodeList). It wouldn't look very good in the spec, but hey, it
>   would work.

>   iv) introduce some sort of WebCGMNode.makeList() method that
>   would return a WebCGMNodeList from a WebCGMNode. This approach would
>   need more thoughts, as it could complicate the 'live' node
>   implementation of our DOM.

>   Thoughts,