Re: Parents & children not consistent
Re: Parents & children not consistent
- Subject: Re: Parents & children not consistent
- From: Bill Cheeseman <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 06:11:44 -0500
on 02-11-10 8:21 PM, Michael Kamprath at email@hidden wrote:
>
on 11/9/02 5:57 AM, Bill Cheeseman at email@hidden wrote:
>
>
> I notice that the parent branch of a UIElement (its ancestors) can include
>
> UIElements that are omitted from the application's children branches (its
>
> descendants). In other words, if you walk backwards from a UIElement to its
>
> root by traversing its parents, you may encounter some UIElements that you
>
> won't see when you return along the same branch by traversing its children.
>
>
The similar case, yet subtlety different, of this I noticed involved
>
sub-menu items. The parent of of a menu item in a sub-menu is the sub-menu.
>
Makes sense. But the parent of the sub-menu that is identified as the parent
>
of a menu item in a sub-menu is NULL. Hence, if you have a reference to a
>
menu item that's in a sub-menu (for example, from an observer), you cannot
>
backwards transverse to its root. You have to get the menu item's owning
>
application, then transverse from the menu bar down looking for the original
>
menu item in order to discover its path to root.
I looked at a bunch of submenu items using Apple's new UIElement Inspector,
and I see valid parents all the way back up to the menu bar element. Well,
in the case of the Finder's View > Arrange > By Name submenu item, I see a
spurious intervening menu UIElement with the phony name "Menu".
Ah! I see what you mean. I just looked at the Finder menus with my browser,
and there are some null parents. So the Inspector must implement a
workaround to traverse the tree from the mouse point to the root. I'll have
to look at Apple's code to see how they're special-casing this.
This raises the important and interesting question of what to call the
missing parent.
I call a lost child a "waif" -- an almost-right word describing a person
having a parent but whose parent doesn't acknowledge the child. I could have
used "bastard" to get the meaning exactly right, but that has the wrong
connotations.
What should we call a lost parent -- someone who has a child but whom the
child does not acknowledge as its parent? I just spent some time with my
dictionaries. Isn't it odd that the English language doesn't seem to have a
noun for the parent of an illegitimate child, the parent of an abandoned
child, or the biological parent of an adopted child. "Deadbeat dad" fits, I
guess, but it doesn't fly in this context. The best adjective is "bereft" or
"bereaved" -- "deprived of a near relation." But it doesn't have a noun
form. Well, "bereaved" can be used as a noun, but it's awkward in this
context and has connotations that don't fit. I think I'll settle on "anonym"
-- a suitably quirky and antiquarian noun (like "waif") meaning "a person
who remains nameless", from "anonymous". Unless somebody has a better
suggestion?
--
Bill Cheeseman - email@hidden
Quechee Software, Quechee, Vermont, USA
http://www.quecheesoftware.com
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