[Pipet Devel] Front to middle, peep, and piper.

[deanne at density.biop.umich.edu]

> Hey Deanne and Jeff;
>     Since you guys are planning on doing both fronts in python, what I 
> was thinking about doing was taking the front to middle XML protocol 
> and extracting it into python function calls, so that a lot of the 
> XML generating code could be reusable in both of your front ends. For 
> instance, instead of having to generate XML like this to connect two 
> nodes:
> 
> 	<front>
> 	  <connect>
> 		   <workspace id = 'id for the workspace containing the loci to 
> connect.'/>
> 	    <input id = 'workspace1/workspace2/container1.xml'
> 			   connector_id = '1'/>
> 	    <output id = 'workspace1/workspace2/viewer2.xml'
> 			    connector_id = '1'/>
> 	  </connect>
> 	</front>
> 
> Instead, I could just add a function call like:
> 
> connect_loci(self, workspace_id, input_id, in_connector_id, 
> output_id, out_connector_id), 
> 
> and you could just call this instead, and all of the xml building 
> could happen inside of this.

I don't know enough XML to parse this correctly, but I assume you're
speaking about a function call that will link nodes together w/out XML
building the links?

>     I think this would make more efficient re-use of code, and could 
> help pave the way towards a corbafied front to middle communication 
> protocol. 

I'm all for corbafied front to middle. 


>     What do you guys think about this? If you like it, I can put it 
> together on my local copy and make a new tarball of it, so you can 
> work off of this (since we don't have cvs ready for the new directory 
> structure yet). 

I'm still in dissertation hell. I'm working today (and was yesterday) on
still poking away at my python skills. 

I feel a bit overwhelmed still, mostly for all the reasons beyond "where
does peep actually fit in" to "what the heck is bl, dl, and etc?" 

I love python, though. 

The tty thing, is just about reading input from the keyboard and returning
the input from the python function. I found ttyio.py that only returns
what you want the keyboard to return (it traps exceptions and also can be
modified to transform inputted text into your own definitions). 

Anyway, I need to figure out exactly what peep is going to be expecting in
this input thing. Are we going to be doing all the text filtering at the
layer of input, or is it going to be a free-for-all and the downunder
going to sort it/handle exceptions? If so, then all the peep input is
going to do is to read the text input and then return the character and
wait for the next one, until a condition is reached. I can have a tree of
input functions that read off one another?

I need to know what i'm going to aim for next. I don't have a good idea of
what peep needs to be doing. Should I start stripping gnu from stuff? And
when should I start worrying about that?