[Bf-taskforce25] Proposal: Blender API revisited

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

+1 from me :)

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute BV  Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam The Netherlands

On 20 Mar, 2009, at 15:30, Brecht Van Lommel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> After some more discussion on IRC, here is another proposal, not unlike
> the Blender API one, but with some tweaks to get it more feasible and
> incremental.
>
> a) Blender 2.5 is about tools and the event system, and operators 
> remain
> just that. They are always context sensitive. Getting blender
> functionality working as such tools is the #1 priority for 2.5.
>
> b) A secondary low level API provides access for python scripts. This 
> is
> very much like the Blender API proposal. What I would like to see
> different there however is that it should be defined in the editor
> modules (close to the operators), and not have the operators call any
> auto-generated functions.
>
> c) Operators are still available for python to call, but they are
> context sensitive. This means they are mostly useful in macro like
> scripts. The low level API permits to do context-less operations.
>
>
> To demonstrate what this means in practice, let me show an example. 
> This
> is the current delete objects operator:
> http://pasteall.org/4641/c
>
> This is how it would look in the earlier context-decoupled method:
> http://pasteall.org/4640/c
>
> And here it is using a separate operator and low level python function:
> http://pasteall.org/4642/c
>
> Advantages:
> - Low level python functions can be added incrementally, not 
> interfering
> with 2.5 targets much.
> - Operator design does not get complicated further.
> - There is a clear distinction between operators and python functions,
> permitting better API design.
>
> Disadvantages:
> - Means we will likely release 2.5 with reduced python functionality.
> How much depends on efforts to improve the API.
> - Duplicate code in defining operator properties and function
> parameters.
> - Effort is needed to get operators accessible context-less for python.
> Unavoidable in any design?
>
> Brecht.
>
>
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