Hi all,
With this post I want to get some input from the community about two different topics.
The first of these is nullable properties in jPDL. As you might have seen in the latest release of the GPD (3.1.0.alpha4), I have provided a checkbox next to some of the text input fields. The checking/unchecking of this checkbox indicates that the corresponding property is not null or null. I introduced this because otherwise I had no means of differentiating a null value from the empty string.
Now with this included, and after the input of a number of users, I realize that some of you might find the result a bit awkward. I invite you to start a discussion on this. The alternative is to disallow empty strings for nullable properties. Would that be any better?
The second question I have is about the way properties should be set. Currently in most of the text fields I use the so-called default selection mechanism of Eclipse. That means that the property is not set unless you press the 'Enter' key. The property will explicitly not get set when you change the focus from the text field to some other control. In that case the value will revert to the original. The rationale behind this is that for consistency purposes I wanted to use the same mechanism as in the SWT tables, where the focuslost mechanism is also not allowed. Now afterwards, I realize there is not yet consistency because this default selection mechanism is not possible for multi line text controls. In that case I had to revert to the focuslost mechanism again.
The question I have is whether this is good or bad? Do you want me to implement the focuslost mechanism on all text fields again (leaving the incosistency with the SWT tables) or can you live with the current solution?
Regards,
Koen
