Re: [Axiom-developer] Doyen Wiki

[root]

Jose,

I've been chasing a couple pointers to try to look at the drag-and-drop
issue in Doyen. These are the big five:

First, javascript has a drag-and-drop set of events, ondrag, ondragstart,
ondragend, ondragenter, ondragleave, and ondragover. These allow javascript
code to know where the user starts and ends a drag.

Second, javascript can get at the clipboarddata allowing us to pass data
to the browser thru the clipboard.

Both of those are covered in the JavaScript Bible by Danny Goodman

Third, firefox allows you to code extensions in javascript. Extensions
are local and are allowed to read/write the file system, etc. The game
is to create a directory structure containing your code, zip it up,
and put it in the chrome subdirectory. A tutorial example is at:
  http://daly.axiom-developer.org/firefox.tgz

Fourth, a more detailed example of a working extension is at:
  http://daly.axiom-developer.org/dbx.tgz

Fifth, the XMLHttpRequest object is a javascript object that allows
you to construct an XML request without leaving the page. You store
data in the object, invoke the send method, and then go thru a 5-state
machine to get the information back. If Axiom is set up to listen for
the requests then Axiom can sit behind the browser and service requests
to d anything, like start graphics independently or start graphics and
store the resulting image and forward it to the browser for inlining.

So the game is to pick on a literate document, drag it onto the browser,
fire up a firefox extension to read the clipboard, write the file into
the appropriate place, and then talk to axiom to compile and load the
file and build the documentation. I know this can be done but everything
is moving at a glacial pace due to multitasking.

I'm going on vacation next week and I'll try to get an example working
if time permits (which it never does).

Tim