Re: [lmi] Generating screenshots automatically

[Greg Chicares]

On 2009-02-22 01:25Z, Greg Chicares wrote:
> On 2009-02-17 01:10Z, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
>> On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:51:18 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:
[...]
>>  I also think that this answers GQ3: we absolutely do need a template
>> defining the non-variable parts of HTML in this file as otherwise you'd
>> almost surely need to manually edit the tool output every time after
>> running it.
> 
> I don't understand. I guess it's time for me to look at the code. Then we
> can avoid an abstract discussion: either I can demonstrate some simple-
> enough way to do it without an html template, or I cannot.

Having looked at the code you posted, I now know what I misunderstood.
I thought you meant you were using some html-template facility already,
and I thought I'd be able to generate the same output without it. But
actually you're using no such facility, so there's none to remove.

I guess you thought I wouldn't be satisfied with
  <p>This is an html paragraph.</p>
when one can ornament that in myriad ways with CSS and so on. But I'd
really rather avoid any adornment fancier than <ol> and an occasional
<em>. To my eye, this page was attractive:
  
http://web.archive.org/web/19981201044802/http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html
while this one
  http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html
is not--though suppressing its CSS makes it much better.

In the next section, the objective is merely to produce a hyperlinked
annotation: e.g., to replace the present
  <li><em>ProductName</em>: Product</li>
output by something like this:
  <li><em>ProductName</em>: <a href="X.html#Y">Product</a></li>

>> GC> The problem, though, is that then there's no obvious way to create
>> GC> this html from the WXXRC file.
>> 
>>  It's worse than non-obvious, I still don't see any satisfactory way to do
>> it even after discussing it with Vaclav.
> 
> In light of the ensuing discussion, I'll try to look for a way. Perhaps
> I'm relying on some aspect of the problem domain that's simpler than I
> have expressed.

I think we've found the best way:

  <object class="wxListBox" name="ProductName">
      <help>Product</help>
+     <lmi:annotation><a href="X.html#ProductName">Product</a></lmi:annotation>

I won't snip any of the following discussion, in case it reveals
anything I'm unintentionally glossing over...

>> GC> Well, I could replace the <help> text:
>> GC> 
>> GC>   <object class="wxListBox" name="ProductName">
>> GC> -     <help>Product</help>
>> GC> +     <help><a href="external.html">External html link</a></help>
>> GC>   </object>
>> GC> 
>> GC> but then I've broken the wxHtmlHelp facility.
>> 
>>  Actually my preferred solution for the current state of wx is to do
>> something like this and define a custom help controller which would
>> separate the information which really needs to be shown in
>> context-sensitive help from the rest. This is a bit heavy but should work.
> 
> If you think self-generated screenshots would be a generally-useful facility
> for wx, then this is a question for wx developers. Otherwise, just for lmi,
> it does seem a bit heavy.
> 
>> GC> I could propose adding a <userdata> element to the "common attributes"
>> GC> enumerated in 'tn0014.txt' for all controls--of course, only if that
>> GC> makes sense for wx in general--but if <userdata> is wanted today, then
>> GC> surely tomorrow a need for <userdata0>, <userdata1...> will arise; so
>> GC> that's probably not a good idea.
>> 
>>  Indeed. We need a generic extension mechanism.
> 
> Which might already exist: the discussion that follows here and in later
> messages indicates that <lmi:any_custom_tag_I_want> is valid, by design.
> 
>> GC> I guess that'd mean we'd have to parse the xml, but then again we'd
>> GC> save the effort of rendering the text to png. What do you think?
>> 
>>  This would certainly work and Vaclav thinks that this is the best
>> solution. I don't like it that much because currently XRC parses XML but
>> simply throws away this information and I will need to reparse it again to
>> recover it. I'd prefer to be able to hook handlers for custom tags into XRC
>> parsing process but this would require some changes in wx. Please let me
>> know if you think it could be worthwhile to do it from LMI point of view.
> 
> Maybe this is the best way:
> 
> On 2009-02-17 16:22Z, Vaclav Slavik wrote:
> | you'd only have to scan the already-parsed wxXmlNode tree
> 
> but you and Vaclav understand this better than I.

...but the concept really does seem that simple, though implementing
it, of course, takes work.

What's the best way to proceed?