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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: KoDataTools
From:       David Faure <david () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2001-10-06 9:20:18
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On Samedi 6 Octobre 2001 03:54, Ellis Whitehead wrote:
> I'm afraid I don't quite follow exactly what KoDataTool provides, but it 
> sounds interesting to me because I've been spending my every spare moment for 
> the last few weeks working on interface-agnostic data representation.  (I 
> have a simple web-server interface to kaddressbook working, as well as 
> console and khtml interfaces to kdict, for example.)  Two things are required 
> of the data component for this: 1) it can work without an X connection, and 
> 2) it can return an XML representation of itself.  Being able to work without 
> an X connection is the really vital issue though.

I'm not sure this is about the same thing.
A "data component" such as what you describe, is a component that _provides_
data, right ?

A "data tool" (and this answers Kurt's question about the naming) is
a component/plugin that _operates_ on data (that the hosting application
sends it). That's why it's called a tool, and not just "data plugin" (which
might be confused with something that has data to offer).

The KoDataTool semantics are: the hosting application gives it data,
and the tool does whatever it wants with that data (including showing dialogs
to the user, and modifying the string to send a modified version to the application).
So this is good for things like spell-checking a single word (for more you need
progressive feedback in the application), for showing synonyms of a word,
antonyms etc. ;).... or for thing like "rotate this image" etc.
Those are all cases where the goal is to send a modified version of the data.
Examples of cases where it's not about modifying the data, but just doing
something with it: "add this email to the addressbook" functionality, 
or "send this URL as email", etc.

It looks different from your "a component that has an interface for providing data"...

> So the burning question which my heart so desires the answer to is: can 
> KoDataTool be used non-gui?

Yes.
(Not the spellchecker datatool though ;)

-- 
David FAURE, david@mandrakesoft.com, faure@kde.org
http://perso.mandrakesoft.com/~david/ , http://www.konqueror.org/
KDE, Making The Future of Computing Available Today

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