[Pipet Devel] NetInputs and NetOutputs

[Brad Chapman]

Jeff wrote:
> About DL support: We'll need commands like "create_link" and "destroy_link"
> ("link" is Overflow terminology, which we should use, and a "pipe" is a type
> of link).

Yup, you've already got addInput, addOutput, removeInput, removeOutput to
call (althought I still need to implement 'em, but that's coming soon...).

> As an example of why the UI needs to follow the commands of the DL
> (although that may seem backward), imagine the user entering a subnet and
> disconnecting a link.
[...snip...description of UI talking to the DL and recieving commands back
 to do things...]

Okay, this is *not* how things work currently, although I think this is a
good idea and we should probably make the move to do this. The basic idea
seems to be that of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern, which is
something Rick mentioned earlier on the Loci list, and is also what is used
in the Berlin project. I'm not really an expert on this at all, but I think
I understand the
basic idea.
    I attached a gif I stole off the web that descibes how this pattern
works (man, I am attaching lots of stuff, sorry 'bout the bandwidth), so
maybe you can follow along with what I say next (hopefully :-).
    So basically what we've got a corba idl for now is the controller,
which allows the user interface to manipulate the Model (the xml in the
definition layer). What Jeff is talking about (I think) is implementing the
View part, so that the definition layer can automatically update the user
interface when something exciting happens in the XML. Using this model, the
user would only be able to do cosmetic things with the user interface (move
stuff around, open and close windowlets) and then would call the Controller
(the idl we have now) when it wants to do something more exciting, like
connect or add nodes, the Changes are made by the Model updating the View.
    Does this make sense with what you were thinking about, Jeff? Make
sense to anyone else? If so, I can start working on setting things up to
work like this. It would make a lot of sense, and would help make the
loading of Overflow xml files into Piper I'm working on now much easier.

Brad
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