on the meaning of "the uPortal Layout Manager"

[Anastasia Cheetham]

On 14-Feb-08, at 10:40 AM, Antranig Basman wrote:

> I think the whole association of the component with "portlets" at all
> is somewhat unfortunate and I would like to see it banished from the
> code.

I agree wholeheartedly.

> My suggestion is calling it the "Cellular Layout Manager", to go
> alongside the "List" and "Grid" layout managers.

Hm... 'cellular' sounds a bit biological to me :-)

> .. we could then
> rename "Column" wherever it occurs in the code to "Cell" and then
> also rid ourselves of this persistent "up/down" "left/right"
> coupling (although perhaps it is helpful to coders when visualising
> what they are writing).

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean when you say "up/down left/ 
right coupling" (which is entirely possible!) I don't think it's  
reasonable to try and get rid of it. A prime purpose of this code is  
to provide keyboard accessibility, and the keyboard functionality is  
based on up/down and left/right movements.

Am I misunderstanding you?

> The name "cell" isn't great since it is possibly open to confusion
> with the "individual" cells which may be moved around.

It also may be confused with table cells, which is inaccurate in that  
it is too restrictive.

> If we keep talking of this in terms of portlets, the virtually
> limitless potential of this new component I fear may be
> perpetually obscured :P

Agreed.

-- 
Anastasia Cheetham                   a.cheetham at utoronto.ca
Software Designer, Fluid Project           fluidproject.org
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre / University of Toronto