[TxMt Plugins] Dialog API improvements

[Chris Thomas]

On Sep 20, 2007, at 11:26 AM, Allan Odgaard wrote:

> On 20/09/2007, at 16:45, Allan Odgaard wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> The restructuring I am envisioning is to move to a command based  
>> system so that the basic syntax is:
>>    tm_dialog «command» [«options»]
>> [...]
>
> I should mention that another candidate is to use an object oriented  
> approach, so we would have:
>
>    tm_dialog create (window|menu|…)
>
> And later that object could be manipulated with other commands.
>
> Though given how only few of the commands follow the ‘create,  
> manipulate, dispose’-cycle, it is probably not a good interface.

Reverse the order and it can be done without forcing other commands to  
conform: "tm_dialog (window|menu) create". That's probably the most  
flexible solution.

But, it might be better to use the former approach with different  
verbs: "show" for synchronous and "create" for asynchronous.  
"tm_dialog show menu", for example, makes perfect sense and allows the  
"create" verb to be added later if there's ever a reason to manipulate  
a menu asynchronously.

The implementation in the Dialog plugin would use the second argument  
as a key for the command subclass, and then dispatch the command line  
to the subclass. This has the side effect of possibly slightly  
simplifying the implementation of "tm_dialog help <noun>".

Chris