[TransWarp] More PWT Ideas (usage, not terminology!)

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 10:06 PM 7/25/03 +0200, Roché Compaan wrote:
>* Phillip J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> [2003-07-25 15:47]:
> > Is that all a bit clearer now?
>
>I think I got my terms mixed up because I understand how domlets are
>defined in a template and was incorrectly thinking of the
>ContentReplacer classes Text and List as DOMlets.

They are.  Look at the IDOMletNode and IDOMletElement interfaces.  Anything 
that implements either is a DOMlet.  It's just that the default 
implementations -- Literal and Element -- are *static* DOMlets, coded to do 
nothing but output the XML that created them.  List and Text are *dynamic* 
DOMlets, that do something besides render static text.

Ironically, I think the trouble you're having with understanding PWT is 
that it's a lot *simpler* than you think.  :)  DOMlets are the only thing 
there *is*, it's just that the domlet="" attribute lets you override the 
default choice of what *kind* of DOMlet is used for that element.


>Just to be clear: a
>DOMLet is the xml node that defines the 'pattern' for data substitution.

No.  A DOMlet represents some portion of an input document, and is 
responsible for generating a portion of the output document.  Input 
elements marked with a define="" attribute are passed to the nearest 
containing explicit DOMlet as a parameter - like supplying a function as a 
parameter to another function, or filling a ZPT macro slot.

Once again, all that exists is DOMlets, some are just children and/or 
parameters of others.


>The ContentReplacer uses this pattern to write data to the content of
>the elements in this pattern. Does this sound right?

ContentReplacer is just an abstract base for a DOMlet that doesn't care 
about its contents in the source document, except as a possible source of 
parameter definitions.  Text doesn't care about the text it's replacing, 
and List replaces its contents with repetitions of its 'listItem' parameter(s).