Diff for "PythonCardComponentFramework"

Introduction

Currently,the major goal of the component model is to support the development of a visual gui building tool where simple and compound components, both built in and third party, can be layed out in a panel and wired together using events, attributes and methods to create a non-trivial application.

Here's a quote I found in an article discussing the UML and how it defines components:

"component: A physical, replaceable part of a system that packages implementation and provides the realization of a set of interfaces. A component represents a physical piece of implementation of a system, including software code (source, binary or executable) or equivalents such as scripts or command files [9]."

• -UML 1.3 Specification

I'm just learning about components and have a friend thats an expert in this area and is advising me and trying to steer me in the right direction. I've been thinking of PythonCard Widgets ( simple and compound ) as components, and that's really not the case. It's possible for a Widget to be a component, but only if it fulfills the responsibilities of some component model. I'm still reading up on what a component model really is.

The following is the state of my own personal take on components.

General statements about component models:

• A component may implement one or more interfaces.
• A component may have attributes.
• Components may communicate with other components.
• A component is an deployable entity.
• Two or more components that implement the same interface(s) are interchangeable.

This sounds just like a class, so I know I'm missing something here...

Specific statements about a possible PythonCard component model:

• A component communicates with other components via interface methods and events.
• A component's interface is defined in XML.
• A component may be serialized according to the resource model defined in XML.

Maybe leveraging Python as we have in the current resource format is a better option. Unless we're leveraging some component model that's already out there that requires XML then we're just creating a lot of extra work by going with XML.