Songhay Studio: MenuItemDatum Revisited

A PIMCO/TEKsystems colleague makes a great point: datum refers to a scalar value—as suggested by the oracle.sql.Datum class definition and its uses. This implies that the thinking behind my class name MenuItemDatum is deeply flawed (it was based on the assumption that datum can be fractal—so the definition of singular and plural would be relativistic and fluid—but datum is a Latin word—and the Romans were all about locking things up in the absolutism of concrete [see “MenuItemDatum, NameValuePair and ChartDataPoints”]!). Also, the use the word Menu is coupled too tightly to a particular visual.

Let’s sketch out something new:

• There should be interfaces called ISortable, IColorable, ISelectable.
• The core definition should be called DisplayItemModel, implementing ISortable.
• Then ColorDisplayItemModel, implementing IColorable and extending DisplayItemModel.
• Then, the ‘too-tight’ definition: MenuDisplayItemModel (which allows nesting children), implementing ISelectable and extending ColorDisplayItemModel.
• Finally, we can have MediaMenuDisplayItemModel and MediaDisplayItemModel (to hold members based on types from System.Windows.Media—more on this later).

The foundational change is replacing datum with model—which is incredibly obvious. This move coheres with the names used for the MVVM acronym. This effort should pack all of what I find beautiful about object-oriented and interface-based programming in one logical place! …can I get a bit more functional now?

https://github.com/BryanWilhite/