[TxMt] Suggestion for DIALOG2 enhancement - interactive async windows

[Hans-Joerg Bibiko]

Hi,

I just fiddling with the GetBundle GUI. While doing this I thought  
that it would be nice to have a asynchronous window created via

"$DIALOG" window create ...

which I can modify while runtime.

A simple example:

Supposing you have a NIB which shows names and last names of persons  
in a table, and you want to select one person in order to display more  
information. But I want to be able to display either all male persons  
or all female persons, and if I selected an item the window shouldn't  
be closed.
What I did is to set up such a NIB with a pop-down menu 'Choose  
Gender'. Fine.
But how can I notify the running script in the background that I  
changed that pop-down menu?

I didn't find a way to do this. That's why I introduced a new method  
to '"$DIALOG" window' named 'getparams'.
This method is very simple. It write the current NSDictionary  
'parameters' of the current nibController to the standard output.  
Nothing else.
But then I was able to ask the async window: Are there any changes? If  
so, then I changed the content of the parameters accordingly and  
updated the window's parameters.

Here is a screencast to illustrate this example:
http://www.bibiko.de/TM_intact_async_window.mov (1.7MB)

By using the new method 'getparams' it opens ways to do more useful  
things, I believe.
You can hide/show items easier, change the content of data cells,  
change the title of buttons according to the status of radio buttons  
or checkboxes, etc.....

Here is the code for "$DIALOG2" > window.mm

...
	else if([command isEqualToString:@"getparams"])
	{
		if([proxy numberOfArguments] < 4)
			ErrorAndReturn(@"no window token given");
		NSString* token = [proxy argumentAtIndex:3];
		TMDNibController* nibController = [TMDNibController  
controllerForToken:token];
		if(nibController)
		{
			id params = [[nibController parameters] mutableCopy];
			[params removeObjectForKey:@"controller"];
			NSString* error = nil;
			if(NSData* data = [NSPropertyListSerialization  
dataFromPropertyList:params format:NSPropertyListXMLFormat_v1_0  
errorDescription:&error])
			{
				NSString* outpl = [[[NSString alloc] initWithData:data  
encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding] autorelease];
				[proxy writeStringToOutput:outpl];
			}
			else
			{
				fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", [error UTF8String] ?: "unknown error  
serializing returned property list");
				fprintf(stderr, "%s\n", [[[nibController parameters] description]  
UTF8String]);
			}
		}
		else
		{
			[proxy writeStringToError:@"There is no window with that token"];
		}
	}


I guess one could improve and simplify the code.

Is this worth to implement this?

Thanks,

--Hans