"Serializer" Hacks

Hi,

Well, GWT is broken and buggy as ever.  For instance, the methods .getEdgeSize() and .getExtraSpace() both fail on a newly created canvas with a NullPointerException.  Turns out that typing too fast (e.g., my auto log-on script) can crash GWT, as well as certain properties.  GWT at least catches errors and gives you nice feedback if you do some things (like call some methods after construction).  Though, I'm not sure how you call a message before construction?  And yes, GWT still crashes every now and again, which is . . . disconcerting.

The API is inconsistent between the getters and setters, which made matching everything up a huge ordeal.  Not to mention that the API has (literally!) about 200 getters and setters.  Not all of them are necessary, probably--but how am I to know?  The code is horribly messy (notably because Java doesn't have function pointers, nor macros) too.

It does kinda remind me, though, of how slow the whole thing is.  GWT takes forever to start, then the website has to load up.  Then you have to click login, wait for the window to come up, enter your username/password, click send, wait for that to go through, open a new project, and *then* you can click "save", and actually run a single test!  Our code isn't exactly slow per-se; the process to do something is just soooo long!

In any case, after much complaining and whatnot, the serializer/deserializer kinda works.  A canvas can be taken in, serialized, and then deserialized.  I don't know if the correspondence is one-to-one in the important ways (except for what I know isn't, like recursively evaluating children), but it's a strong start.

Tomorrow (today) I'll finish it up.  I DO have other classes too, so I'll need to work on that as well.  It's just about 1:45AM, so, knocking off for the night.  See you bright and early.

Ian