[reportlab-users] Widget Libraries, anywhere??

Tim Roberts reportlab-users@reportlab.com
Tue, 07 Oct 2003 10:10:48 -0700


On Mon, 6 Oct 2003 12:05:57 +0200, Dinu Gherman
<gherman@darwin.in-berlin.de> wrote:
>
>I've googled for existing ReportLab Widget libraries, but have found
>almost nothing. What can be said about the "market success" of this
>"standard"? Does anybody know of any such more or less interesting
>collections?

Widgets?  In what sense?  Can you give me an example of what you would
picture as a ReportLab "widget"?

I think of "widget sets" as a way to construct a UI out of generic
reusable parts.  I think of ReportLab as a very special-purpose tool for
producing universally printable documents programmatically.  In my
experience, the things that go into a printable document rarely break
themselves down into things for which a widget set would apply.  Reports
and documents tend to be extremely application-specific, much more so than
a UI.

Platypus, which is part of ReportLab, is probably the closest thing to a
widget set in the current product.  So far, I have had only a small number
of instances where I felt that the standard set did not work, and in those
cases I found it surprisingly easy to create my own.


>Or is the "standard" too confusing and/or vague?

If I may exaggerate just a bit, when the standard IS the source code,
vagueness is not an issue.  If the code says so, that's the standard.


>Or maybe the sample widget collections? I personally feel very confused 
>by the flags stuff which is far away from what it should be like in an 
>OO world, but YMMV, of course.

Perhaps you should give some specific examples.  Code contributions are
always welcome, of course!
--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.