Views should be included by opensocial?

[Dan Lester <da...@danlester.com>]

I've come across a couple of gadgets that use the 'views' feature to
work out if they're on the canvas or profile.

However, these do not explicitly require 'views' in their spec (only
'opensocial'). They work OK in Orkut et al but not in Shindig.

Should Shindig's opensocial feature include a dependency on views?

Sorry if I've missed the point. Perhaps the other containers are just
trying to be extra helpful...

Dan

Re: Views should be included by opensocial?

[John Hjelmstad <fa...@google.com>]

I think another way of saying this is that OpenSocial doesn't depend on
"views", but that doesn't mean a given implementation *can't* include it as
an implicit dependency. When it happens this is a confusing situation, so
it's one we should probably discourage or try to remove where it occurs. It
leads to gadgets that aren't spec-compliant yet still work in certain cases.

As a quick pedantic follow-up, I'd suggest in the future moving these sorts
of questions to the OpenSocial and Gadgets Spec discussion group in our
ongoing effort to keep implementation and spec separate (
http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-and-gadgets-spec).

Thanks,
John

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 3:13 PM, Kevin Brown <et...@google.com> wrote:

> Absolutely not. Please read the spec:
> http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/spec.html
>
> An implementation of opensocial that happened to depend on views might be
> OK
> in some cases (say, for implementing requestShareApp), but that fact
> should
> be well hidden from the gadget developers.
>
> There are too many transitive dependencies as is. It makes upgrading
> libraries independently of one another a godawful nightmare, and evolving
> the spec impossible.
>
> On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Dan Lester <da...@danlester.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > I've come across a couple of gadgets that use the 'views' feature to
> > work out if they're on the canvas or profile.
> >
> > However, these do not explicitly require 'views' in their spec (only
> > 'opensocial'). They work OK in Orkut et al but not in Shindig.
> >
> > Should Shindig's opensocial feature include a dependency on views?
> >
> > Sorry if I've missed the point. Perhaps the other containers are just
> > trying to be extra helpful...
> >
> > Dan
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> ~Kevin
>

Re: Views should be included by opensocial?

[Kevin Brown <et...@google.com>]

Absolutely not. Please read the spec:
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/spec.html

An implementation of opensocial that happened to depend on views might be OK
in some cases (say, for implementing requestShareApp), but that fact should
be well hidden from the gadget developers.

There are too many transitive dependencies as is. It makes upgrading
libraries independently of one another a godawful nightmare, and evolving
the spec impossible.

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Dan Lester <da...@danlester.com> wrote:

>
> I've come across a couple of gadgets that use the 'views' feature to
> work out if they're on the canvas or profile.
>
> However, these do not explicitly require 'views' in their spec (only
> 'opensocial'). They work OK in Orkut et al but not in Shindig.
>
> Should Shindig's opensocial feature include a dependency on views?
>
> Sorry if I've missed the point. Perhaps the other containers are just
> trying to be extra helpful...
>
> Dan
>
>


-- 
~Kevin