[lmi] "File | Save" enablement [Was: product editor patch]

[Greg Chicares]

On 2008-03-28 13:38Z, Vaclav Slavik wrote:
> Greg Chicares wrote:
[...]
>> (1) Should "File | Save" indeed be enabled for an unmodified new
>> document? I see two options:
>>   (a) disable it; or
>>   (b) enable it, but map it to "File | Save as".
>> I've always followed (a) and disabled it, but that's really just
>> a habit rather than a conscious choice. Is there a reason to
>> follow (b) instead? 
> 
> It makes it possible to save empty document without having to go 
> through Save as (i.e. do something other than what you normally do to 
> save documents).

I applied this hunk of the patch to my local tree, but I didn't
observe any difference in behavior. I tried
 - both '.ill' and '.cns' files
 - both loading saved documents and creating new ones
and looked at enablement of the file-save command on both the
toolbar and the menu, and everything seemed to behave the same.

Let me ask my US coworkers to test this and report their
observations, in case I've misapplied the patch or overlooked a
scenario that actually differs.

I think I'll need to ask for help in fixing enablement (for both
menus and the toolbar). Years ago, I spent a lot of time on this,
and tried many different approaches, but never found one that
really worked. The BEGIN_EVENT_TABLE blocks in 'main_wx.cpp',
'illustration_view.cpp', and 'census_view.cpp' are still chaotic
because of my struggles. I suspect that the patch might have made
a "correct" change to lmi code that's not just incorrect, but
incomprehensible, and simply needs to be redone from scratch.

> If it's impossible to have empty documents in LMI, 
> then it should certainly be disabled -- but then, so should Save as.

Ignoring the "Text" document type, which is hidden from users,
lmi documents can't be empty, in the "devoid of content" sense.
But they may contain only defaults, so that they don't represent
any actual user input. "File | New | Census", e.g., produces a
document that contains all the xml elements that any census file
can have, but all those elements have only default values.