Wizard sequencer -- Details


Details

As there were many problems with interface and workflow design, we would like to outline a possibility of siplifying this task.

Popups

Thirst thought is to include all dialogs into the Sequence. For example the Popups. With the current design it is quite easy and it would unify the overall workflow design.

Buttons

Because one of the often changes to the already done workflows was some rearragement of dialogs in different order, we want to simplify this task a most. Ideally, if one wants to exchange two dialogs, he only have to exchange to rows in a map. But, this demand force us to somehow handle some parts of interface, I mean the bottom buttons. Usually, there will be [Back] and [Next]. But, for example the last dialog can have [Finish]. And if we want to transparently exchange two dialogs, we must handle also these situations.

Wizard library

The Wizard Sequencer is planned to use the Wizard Library a lot. As it will setup and drive some parts of interface, the unified approach is needed. The idea is that the Wizard Sequencer will setup some parts of the interface and the module the rest (disjunctive) at the best (and the most usual) case.

Processing

The process will be simple, the developer has to define the dialogs, which use the global variable as medium for information exchange and which return some symbol. And at last, just call the WS. The Wizard Sequencer just calls the dialogs depending on the previous return state. The [Back] way is handled automaticaly, there is no need to define it in the workflow.

Limits

To satisfy all these requirements, we must accept some (in our eyes wise and useful) limits. First limit or feature is that the workflow will be driven be the return values. It is straightforward as this is almost same, how some wizards are done now. This imply another (implementation) feature -- the data during the sequence will be held in the global variable. This is also a common implementation of the current wizards. Another limit is the flow control. We assume that as the user goes forward through the flow, the same way he goes backward. This is also an evident presumption, the other case would anyway confuse the user a lot. See this
example for details. And the last limit is are cycles. If the user goes through the cycle...

FIXME: finish this section