Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

RFC: #renderTableWith

Author:Dave Winer
Posted:10/12/1998; 6:26:41 AM
Topic:Suggestion: Explore the Calendar
Msg #:187 (In response to 178)
Prev/Next:186 / 188

We're running a mail list for people testing and evaluating the new mainResponder that's at the core of nirvana.userland.com.

I've decided to try an experiment, here's one of the RFCs I posted to the list this morning. This is coming from a whole different context, it probably won't make much sense to a lot of people, but then there are probably some people who will be interested.

If you don't care about table renderers or outline renderers, skip to the next message. Anyway...

#renderTableWith, a new attribute for the website framework, would allow you to point to a table with a URL, and have the table rendered thru a custom script, and it would be inside the website framework, with glossaries, templates, object hierarchies, all the usual stuff, and would work with dynamic and static sites.

This is my response to Eric Soroos' request for the ability to point to non-existent objects with URLs. I think his proposed solution has merit, I need it in other applications, like the SlideShow outliner (the individual slides don't actually exist as separate objects, they're top-level heads inside a master outline).

But I'd rather address the issue in this way, the tables actually *do* exist, the problem is figuring out how to get them to render without having to put a "default" object in each table. This would enable more database publishing applications, which is obviously a Good Thing.

#renderTableWith is also nice because it mirrors #renderOutlineWith, the same logic could be used to support both, and further, a lot of Frontier users already understand outline renderers, so table renderers are a natural next step.

So the question for everyone, but primarily for Eric, does this solve the problem? Can you see any pitfalls?

An RFC is a request for comment, so please do.

Thanks!

Dave



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