layout-level calculation engine

[MervJ]

I missed part of the opening keynote.

Does anyone have an example of "layout-level calculation engine" that was shown?

Does it require a plug-in?

Thanks

[Lee Smith]

Since a lot of us didn't attend DevCon, what is the calculation suppose to do?

Does it have something to do with the Web View, or did you miss the Topic Area?

Lee

[David Jondreau]

The Web Viewer is a way of accessing the calculation engine in a context-free way...the only way to get data to display in that sense. (Conditional formatting is similar, but obv you can't display data).

Basically, you can display global variables and Get() functions that you might put into a field in a Web Viewer instead. I tried it out with this Custom Function and it works great.

So instead of having an unstored calc = Get(foundCount) for display on a navigation bar, you use a Web Viewer with the source = HTML(Get(foundCount)) where HTML() is a CF that formats the text to be read by the viewer.

Why this functionality isn't available in a simpler format (ie without the need to encode HTML) is another question....

Edited July 21, 2008 by Guest

[Inky Phil]

If I am not mistaken this is a brief demo video here

http://www.geistinteractive.com/node/42

Phil

[Lee Smith]

Hi Phil,

Thank you for the Link, I would have liked to seen this presentation in person. Oh well, I hear that DevCon is coming to San Francisco next year, so I'll finally get to go to one.

In the mean time, it looks like I'll have a few hours of fun with Todd's stuff.

Thanks again,

Lee

[fabriceN]

I'm a found of webviewers as a calculation holder, but I don't understand why they call it context free.

It is table free, but certainly not context free (the context is, the current table occurrence)

[Colin Keefe]

I think the take away concept wasn't so much that web viewer invoked calculations were by definition context free, but that you could, using context-free functions within the calc dialog, create web viewer objects that are independent of the layout's TO. Obviously as soon as you specify any TO-specific references in the calc dialog, it isn't going to be context free.

DJ's quoted CF is a good, simple example (and the one that stuck in my mind in the opening session). Embed a Get(FoundCount) in an HTML-wrapping CF and stick it into a web viewer object, and you get a little Found Count number you can copy/paste.

I thought it was a neat trick, and for those who like to have "x of xx records found, xxx total" on their layouts, it's a way to do it without having three embedded calc fields in each table.