Beyond 2.6

[Christian Stimming]

Am Mittwoch, 13. Februar 2013, 13:07:55 schrieb Derek Atkins:
> John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> writes:
> >>> What do you mean by "real-time validation of inputs"?
> >> 
> >> I mean, e.g, making sure an Account has a name entry, and that it's
> >> unique, and that the account type is valid based on the parent.. 
> >> Those
> >> kinds of input validation that's currently done in the dialog.
> > 
> > Those checks should be part of the Account constructor, and would
> > throw exceptions. The interface code between the engine and Gtk+ would
> > convert those exceptions into GErrors for the dialog box to handle;
> > C++-based UI frameworks would be able to catch the exceptions
> > directly.
> 
> Except by the time you're processing it's too late.  It would be nicer
> to make the "OK" box grey until the dialog is properly filled in, to
> provide validation of inputs even sooner to the user.  But that implies
> some way to push the validation requirements into the GUI.

Absolutely. The constraints are needed on several levels. Of course 
constraints in the lower data layer (or database layer) are needed to enable 
unittesting and consistency there. But as the goal is a user-centric 
application, the constraints must be communicated to the user in a way that 
makes it easy for him/her to understand those constraints. At the end of the 
day, this means the GUI must contain the knowledge about those constraints 
just as well as the data layer. A question of what we're doing this for, after 
all.

Regards,

Christian