 | | | Improving Tasks | Improving Tasks 2004-10-22 - By Rhino
I'm starting to get the hang of Ant now and am starting to think about
developing some tasks to increase what it can do.
However, before I start developing entirely new tasks, I thought I might take a
whack at improving a few existing tasks. One improvement I'm thinking about
involves the core task <input>. I'd like to enhance it in a couple of ways:
1. Provide for a masked input field so that it could be used to prompt for a
password that would remain unreadable to anyone looking over the users shoulder
. (I envision adding a 'mask="true"' parameter to make that possible with the
default for 'mask' being 'false'.)
2. I'm thinking about adding the capability of having a radio button group and
/or drop down lists so that there are some additional ways for users to provide
input.
The problem here is that I haven't any real idea how to go about this. How
would I get my hands on the source code for the existing task without stepping
on anyone's toes? Would my enhancements have to be approved in advance or would
I submit them and then go through some kind of voting process by Ant users with
my changes discarded if I didn't "win" the vote? What testing would I have to
do to satisfy the Ant community that my code was clean enough to implement?
Or should I develop an entirely new task with the intent of deprecating <input>
and replacing it with my 'better' task (assuming I can get it to work ;-)?
By the way, is this the right list for these sorts of questions or should I be
asking on the developers list?
Rhino
---
rhino1 AT sympatico DOT ca
"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make
it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies." - C.A.R. Hoare
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<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I'm starting to get the hang of Ant now and am starting to think about
developing some tasks to increase what it can do. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>However, before I start developing entirely new tasks, I thought I might
take a whack at improving a few existing tasks. One improvement I'm thinking
about involves the core task <input>. I'd like to enhance it in a couple
of ways:</DIV>
<DIV>1. Provide for a masked input field so that it could be used to prompt for
a password that would remain unreadable to anyone looking over the users
shoulder. (I envision adding a 'mask="true"' parameter to make that possible
with the default for 'mask' being 'false'.)</DIV>
<DIV>2. I'm thinking about adding the capability of having a radio button group
and/or drop down lists so that there are some additional ways for users to
provide input.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The problem here is that I haven't any real idea how to go about this. How
would I get my hands on the source code for the existing task without stepping
on anyone's toes? Would my enhancements have to be approved in advance or would
I submit them and then go through some kind of voting process by Ant users with
my changes discarded if I didn't "win" the vote? What testing would I have to
do
to satisfy the Ant community that my code was clean enough to implement?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Or should I develop an entirely new task with the intent of deprecating
<input> and replacing it with my 'better' task (assuming I can get it to
work ;-)?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>By the way, is this the right list for these sorts of questions or should
I
be asking on the developers list?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Rhino<BR>---<BR>rhino1 AT sympatico DOT ca<BR>"There are two ways of
constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are
obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that
there are no obvious deficiencies." - C.A.R. Hoare</DIV></BODY></HTML>
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