Open MiniPatterns

The Problem

COOL:Plex is a strongly pattern or better template based oo software development tool. The possibility of making very complex templating is the thing that makes COOL:Plex very unique as a software development tool. But unfortunately there are not many free patterns available. I'm not sure what the reasons are for this situation. I think one of the reasons is, that it is a common approach to build an own single layer above the PATTERNS libs of COOL:Plex. In this layer, one will normally do a substitude for the COOL:Plex pattern functions inheriting from the corresponding PATTERNS function. All modifications or extensions will than often be done in this layer library or directly based on this library and so all is gathered in one big library. Maybe it's easy to handle it in this way but than it's not easy to share or to distribute the created functions, because you get the whole company layer.

The Solution

OK, I think it is possible to do it also in small mini-libs. This will have the big advantage that it's easy to share with other plex developer. There will also be some dependencies between the mini libs, but they must be hold as small as possible. I want to create a collection of small COOL:Plex pattern libraries. I appreciate and welcome everyone who is willing to help to create this collection. This libaries should be used as a technical demonstration of the COOL:Plex possibilities and can be downloaded on a "as is" base. They shall all be free for everyone. So thinking of the Open Source model I choosed the name Open Minipatterns for the collection.

How to contribute a Open Minipattern

Here are Open Minipatterns provided from other COOL:Plex developer:

Luke Hammilton's TreeLand
A pattern that uses MSTreeview and MSListView to maintain and structure data.

That's the list of Open Minipatterns I plan:

Little Tools
Little tool for concating and decomposing values of fields in a variable

Protocolling
A pattern that gives you the possibility to protocol each change on records in a log file.

Text Importing/Exporting
Importing and exporting database records to/from textfiles.

Tree View
A pattern that makes it easy to create functions that show your data in a treeview.

EditSlim
A pattern to maintain the records of an entity with a grid and only one function to insert and change recods (only one time panel design).

EditTab
A pattern to maintain the data of one record with more than one panel. It will use tabs and child funtions to do that.

GridAPI
A pattern with source code functions for extended work with the WinWidgets grid.

WinAPI
Useful API's for Windows.

RefersTo
A pattern that supports the funtional referential integriy (like OwnedCascade) also for the refersto relations in your model.

ChildEdit
A pattern with funtions that allow to maintain a entity in (a) child function(s).

WordAPI
A collection of Word sourcecode api's that allows and eases the creation of Word documents from within Plex functions.

ExcelAPI
A collection of Excel sourcecode api's that allows and eases the creation of Excel documents from within Plex functions.

Filter
A collection of functions concerning filtering. As example the expansion of the SQL block fetch to combine where filtering with the common position logic.

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