CardContainers - Updating a view's arrangement on show

Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction here, I've been
pulling my hair out for the last day or so on this.

I have a small translation framework I'm working on that adds a key
field to push buttons, static texts, group boxes etc. to set the
text/caption based on an external file.  This is all working fine, but
now I come to CardContainer's and need to update the sub views
"arrangement" on startup to use the translation.

In my LookupContainerView subclass I have my mutator specified as:

key: anObject
        key := anObject.
        [self arrangement: (I18NStringFactory at: key)] on: NotFoundError
                do: [:x | self arrangement: key]

which nicely updates the arrangement value to be whats currently
translated, but this doesn't happed at run time.

Initially I had assumed the accessors/mutators of published aspects
would be called when loading the resource, but this doesn't appear to
happen.  In my other components such as my StaticText subclass I've
"worked around this" by simply overriding the accessor/mutator of text
to return the translated key ragardless of the text variable.

However I'm finding overriding the arrangement/arrangement: methods
doesn't "quite" work as I end up getting multiple tabs as the
underlying TabView gets confused over the changing arrangement (so that
it can't remove the existing tab).

I just tried overriding the accessors/mutators for
arrangement/arrangement: with the following to no avail either, I'm
guessing the accessos/mutators just never get used :(

arrangement
        self viewIsBeingComposed
                ifTrue: [^super arrangement]
                ifFalse:
                        [[^(I18NStringFactory at: key)] on: NotFoundError do: [:x | ^key]]

arrangement: a
        self viewIsBeingComposed
                ifTrue: [super arrangement: key]
                ifFalse:
                        [[super arrangement: (I18NStringFactory at: key)] on: NotFoundError
                                do: [:x | super arrangement: key]]

viewIsBeingComposed
        self allParents do: [:parent|  (parent isKindOf: ViewComposerArena)
ifTrue: [^true]].
        ^false.


I've tried overriding various methods that look like they run on
startup (onFullyCreated, onModelChanged, onStartup, onViewOpened etc. )
in order to force setting the arragnemt, but nothing seems to actually
work.

Anyone got any ideas or suggestions?

Mark

Mark,

> I've tried overriding various methods that look like they run on
> startup (onFullyCreated, onModelChanged, onStartup, onViewOpened etc. )
> in order to force setting the arragnemt, but nothing seems to actually
> work.
>
> Anyone got any ideas or suggestions?

Have you tried leaving #arrangement[:] untouched, and calling something like:
    self subViews do:
        [:each || devtime runtime |
        devtimer := self arrangementOf: each.
        runtme := self I18NStringFactory at: devtime.
        self arrangementOf: each put: runtime].
as part of the initialisation code for your subclass of TabView ?

Otherwise, I didn't really follow your explanation so I may be missing
something, but if I were looking down this particular gun-barrel I'd try to
interpose my code somewhere in the de-STBing process for the Views.

I haven't tried any of the following, but there are several places where it
seems as if a hook /should/ work.

There is the code in category 'binary filing' on the class sice of View and its
subclasses, where you can trap and modify the state of a "resurected" View.

You could use a custom subclass of ViewProxy that knows to internationalise
View instances as it resurects them.

You could override View #state to include a MessageSend that caused a View
instance to internationalise itself as it is de-STBed.

The last two are virtually identical in effect, and I suspect that one or the
other would be a good place to start.  In fact I /suspect/ that it'd be
possible to patch the base system so that it automatically internalitionalised
views as they were de-STBed without (usually) any need for subclasses.   But
I've thought that before and found I was wrong...

    -- chris

I assume by STB you refer to some deserialization process?

Currently I don't have a subclass of TabView, or CardContainer because
everytime I try to "mutate" a CardContainer to my subclass (with no
methods) I get internal errors and exceptions thrown up everywhere.

I tried overriding the few methods in 'binary filing' that appeared
like they might be usefull, only they never got called.

I also override #state in my one of my custom view classes, but it was
never called either.

*sigh*

Hazah - a radically different approach and I seem to be working better.
 Screw all the messy subclasses and trying to be intelligent.

On my main view class (as opposed to the original control view classes
I was working with) having the following in #onViewOpened:

  I18NStringFactory translate: 'test' in: self view for:
'label.appName'.

where translte:in:for: is defined as:

translate: aPresenterNamed in: aView for: aKey
        | subview translation |
        translation := I18NStringFactory for: aKey.
        subview := (aView allSubViews
                                select: [:each | each name isNil not and: [each name equals:
aPresenterNamed]]) first.
        (subview isKindOf: ContainerView)
                ifTrue:
                        [subview arrangement: translation].

Now I'm just simply adding the different view classes to handle them as
I need to.

With a bit of hacking this I should be able to get to the
menus/ComandDescriptions as well. Mmm.

[hidden email] wrote:

> I assume by STB you refer to some deserialization process?

Yes, the deserialisation of "View resources" from their static representation
as ByteArrays[*] held by the resource manager, and subsequent conversion into
full objects which are then connected to "live" Windows widgets.  I'd add more,
but it seems you have found a happy solution coming from a different direction.

    -- chris

([*] The static representation is different in D6, although the underlying idea
is the same.)