Some good feedback. Simon suggests deriving from the existing IBlogThis – sounds fine to me, especially since there seem to be a fair amount of IBlogThis implementations out there already.
Matt confirms the need for this extra functionality…glad to know I’m not the only one who thinks we need this. :-)
Douglas asks why we don’t just use attributes for the extra information. A good thought; however, I think there is then an additional, implicit contract. I might get the name of a type that implements the configuration GUI, but what do I do with it then? There are implicit assumptions if we go this way; I’d much rather have an interface method, and let the implementor decide how it should work.
I also forgot a couple of things. First, we need to pass a parent to the Configure function, so the implementation can use it to parent any dialogs if necessary. And we need a way to get the display name of the plug-in, to be shown to the user in a list of plug-ins (which could be an attribute, but I’ve left it as a property for the moment). So my new proposed version:
public interface IBlogThisEx : IBlogThis
{// Name of plug-in, suitable for display to a user
string DisplayName;
// Display configuration dialog to user, if applicable
void Configure(IWin32Window parent);// Return true if an editing GUI will be shown to the
// user when BlogItem is called. In this case, the
// aggregator will not display its own editing UI.
bool HasEditingGUI();}
Keep the comments coming!
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Douglas’ suggestion of separate UI configuration component does have an additional benefit – it would allow the configuration UI to be hosted inside of your configuration dialog; on a separate tab, for example. There’s nothing that says that these approaches are mutually exclusive – you could offer the attribute option for plug-ins that want a deeper integration, and use the Configure approach for those plug-ins that prefer the simpler approach of just popping up their own dialog.
Greg brings up some valid points. A few ideas I have are detailed below. In the case of MovableType, as Im sure is the case with other blog software, there are numerous properties available when submitting a new post. Take…[more]
The only issue with adding in an IWin32Window parent to is that not all of us are writing exclusively for the MS world. It would be nice if the interface could be supported mono:: or DotGNU
Plato – good points…what do the other Winforms implementations use for parent windows to the Form.ShowDialog function? Anyone know?
A quick check shows:
In mono, there’s ShowDialog() but ShowDialog(System.Windows.Forms.IWin32Window) isn’t yet implemented (probably because IWin32Window isn’t yet defined).
dotGNU doesn’t appear to have a UI library, but most UI development appears to be using Qt# and from the API docs it looks like they’d use a Qt.QWidget.
Perhaps the answer is to have both Configure() and Configure(IWin32Window parent).
Would Configure(object parent) work?
Hmm…using ‘object parent’ doesn’t really convey much meaning to the implementor. We could use Control, I suppose -
void Configure(Control parent);
True, but … you could cast an object to be whatever window type you needed (in Qt# the equiv to control is a widget). Control does look like it should be OK in mono though.
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Greg and Simon are talking about an extension to BlogThis. I agree that BlogThis as-is is fairly limited and could definitely use some improvements. For instance, I had been considering writing a w.bloggar plugin but quickly realized that it needed a configuration setting (the install directory of w.bloggar). Unfortunately, IBlogThis does not provide any hooks for configuration of the…[more]
Luke makes some valid points about the interface Greg, Simon and I have been discussing. I do agree with HasEditingGUI to a point. This allows the aggregator to maintain a consistent user interface throughout. However, I see this is perhaps…[more]
More on the interface extension that Luke, Simon, Matt, and I have been talking about…[more]
Sounds like Greg Reinacker is brewing up a posting interface for NewsGator via Simon Fell’s IBlogThis interface. Cool!…[more]
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