[Kst] JS and Kst

[George Staikos]

On Thursday 01 December 2005 20:11, Andrew Walker wrote:
> A few general comments on using JS in Kst:
>
> 1) If I enter commands from the JS console the objects
> I create/move/resize are not updated until Kst repaints
> for some other reason.

  That shouldn't happen.  testgraphics.js works for me.  Does it not work for 
you?

> 2) There should be a way to determine the size of a window.

  The size of a window is not very meaningful.  It's the size of the view that 
matters, and that's already available.  Window sizes are not even constant 
since chrome changes can happen.

> 3) When I type "exit" into the JS console and then run the
> data wizard whatever windows and plots I create in the
> data wizard do not appear

   Does this happen if you use the external kstcmd instead of the embedded 
one?  I suspect not...  There is a bug (in KMDI I think) that causes us to 
completely lose our views when the embedded terminal is closed.

> 4) The result of typing a command into the JS console
> should probably be indented so that it is easier to see

  I don't follow this one.  What do you mean?

> 5) If the result of typing a command into the JS console
> is "undefined" it would probably be better to not display anything
> e.g. ellipse.move(pt); would not print anything on the next line

  This is how JavaScript works.  Everything returns an object, some of those 
are undefined.  We might be able to put a hack into the dcop call that strips 
this undefined out, but it's not as simple as doing it by looking for the 
string.  For instance:
foo="undefined"
foo
This -should- return the string undefined too.

> 6) Is there any reason that the concept of plot groups is not
> supported?

  Just not implemented yet.  There are lots of things unimplemented, and I 
keep a running list in extensions/js/bindings.txt.  I noticed it's a bit 
stale at the moment.

> 7) There is documentation on CubicBezier but I don't seem able to
> create such an object. Although the code is still present in Kst
> I don't think it is connected to anything in either JS or the GUI.
 
 That was stale documentation.  I removed it.  The next doc regeneration will 
update the index.

> 8) It would be nice to have a DataMatrix constructor that would create
> a DataMatrix from a gradient, as can be done from the GUI

  Sure, for 1.2.1 or 1.3.0.  I'm not sure if we should update the script 
language in a minor release.

> 9) Kst.windows[0].plot[0].legend; returns null rather than a legend object

  Is there a legend on that plot?  It doesn't create a legend, it just returns  
apointer to it if it exists.  It would be very unfortunate if accessing a 
plot's properties resulted in a legend being created.

> 10) Is there any reason for the "enabled" and "front" properties of the
> Legend object being string values rather than boolean values?

  Those properties don't exist as far as I know.

> 11) Its not clear to me how I would actually get an instance of a
> DebugLogEntry. I would have expected an entry in the DebugLog
> but cannot see anything there.

  Right, it's not implemented yet.

> Other than these relatively minor problems it looks good. I think a chart
> of the relationships between all the classes would make things much easier
> for people.

  Agreed.  Shouldn't be too hard to make one of these from the XML file after 
the important 1.2.0 things are done.

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/