RFC 19: style and label attribute binding...

[Daniel Morissette]

Stephen Woodbridge wrote:
> 
> So how does this work for labelitem? Do we use the TEXT 'myLabelItem' 
> syntax? and how is that different from TEXT 'myLabelText'? In general, I 
> would think we would want a clear syntactic identifier that indicates I 
> am passing a binding vs a literal string vs a constant vs a URL parameter.
> 
> Have you given any thought into using this to also bind to URL 
> parameters? Does this break any of the existing URL parameter 
> substitutions?
> 


I agree that we need a syntactic identifier to indicate that this is an 
item binding and not a constant.

The case of TEXT may be a bit different because it already supports item 
substitutions using square brackets, but we should define something 
today so that we don't end up being stuck later when we need to bind 
string parameters to attributes. Perhaps we could use the square 
brackets [] to be consistent with expressions and the existing TEXT 
substitution.


Another comment/question I had with respect to the RFC is how should 
enumeration value be written in the data files when we use attribute 
binding.

For instance, if I have:

    POSITION '[myPositionItem]'

Then what should the values of myPositionItem be in the data files? 
integers (101,102,103,...), or strings (UL, LR, UR...)?

Using enum values as strings may be the safest way to go and would be my 
preference, but come with a performance price. At least the way plan to 
handle enums should be documented in the RFC.

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/