Make it easy to re-render a wordcram, without re-parsing all the text

[danbernier]

I'm thinking something like this:

def draw_all
  reset_words
  while has_more
    draw_next
  end
end

def reset_words
  words.each(&:reset)
end

(...except in java, not ruby.)

We want a way to reset the progress when you're drawing incrementally (call reset_words when you're done), and a way to reset it if you just call draw again.

[danbernier]

This is done - it works.

In retrospect, I'm not sure it's a feature WordCram should have.

The main motivation was to avoid re-loading the URL. (Loading a file from the harddrive is plenty fast, and so is parsing text with cue.language.) That can also be accomplished in-sketch, by caching the contents, or saving the file. Also, WebPage can be made to cache its text, and you can construct a WordCram with your own WebPage object.

This code complicates the internals a bit, and given the motivation and work-arounds, I'm not sure it's worth it.

[danbernier]

See the cache-web-pages branch for an alternative. Here's about how a sketch would look:

import wordcram.*;
import wordcram.text.*;  // <-  Ick: it requires an extra import

WebPage webPage;    // <- global variable for the WebPage

void setup() {
  webPage = new WebPage("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random", this);
  // Ick: have to pass `this` to WebPage, so it can load the URL.  ------^
  // Could improve that: WordCram.getEngine() could set a ref to parent on all the components.
}

void draw() {
  new WordCram(this)   // <- Look Ma, a new WordCram every frame!
    .fromText(webPage)  // <- Not in love with this method name
    .drawAll();
}

[danbernier]

@danbernier thanks for writing down your thoughts, because I totally forgot all this stuff.