RunnerSyntax -> QuerySyntax

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday 07 April 2009, Dario Freddi wrote:
> > i remembered today that i'd like to do something similar for DataEngines
> > as i've done for AbstractRunners so they can expose their syntax for
> > runtime exploration.
>
> Uhm, what's the use case here?

good question :) i should have included that, and i didn't. but you answer it 
later on ...

> The average user (imho) won't even know what
> a DataEngine is, and that's actually a big plus, as we can code applets
> relying on powerful engines without useless overhead for the user. 

agreed; it's not for users.

> I agree
> though that DataEngines are worth being documented, mostly for developers.

yes.

> With some changes, we could surely adapt the current *Syntax to work well
> (not only) with DataEngines too.

that's the idea.

> > and i realized at that point that RunnerSyntax is probably not overly
> > specific to runners... but rather to documenting what you can do with
> > queries.
> >
> > it occurred to me that perhaps i should rename RunnerSyntax to
> > QuerySyntax and look into using it for DataEngines and Services.
> > thoughts?
>
> The rename looks sensible in this case, but again we should also think
> about the implementation. Sure such a thing for engines is surely needed
> also (hint,hint) in preparation for Plasmate. (Having a very simple and on
> the go documentation for engines would be a big plus for our Plasmate
> users)

that's exactly what i was thinking of.

when we put plasmadataengine together, it became evident that a lot of engines 
require one to know how to use them. what can you ask them for, for instance? 
so some sort of runtime documentation would be great. :)

i'm still not sure how i want to expose it .. it might be cool, for instance, 
to have it as a "special" source you can request, e.g. DataEngineSyntax. but 
it might also be more straightforward to just do it exactly like it's done in 
AbstractRunner with a syntaxes() method.

anyways ... any objections before i got and make the name change in 
preparation for this path?

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

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