Wowzers, I didn’t realize that. I’ll need to investigate a solution. I imagine a script could be made to give them all explicit names, but that syncronization could be tricky.

One note however. If you place multiple Catalyst components in Builder (for instance, two copies of your LoginForm, or your InheritenceExample) then the references to the textinput2 and button1 objects will not work in the second instance. This is due to the fact that the components have no IDs, and these names are generated on-the-fly as they are added to the Display List.

This could be overcome by using the component’s child list and mapping the components to the order of the children. But even the child list order could change as the designer makes changes in Catalyst and re-exports the design.

It sure would be nice if Catalyst allowed the designer to give the sub-components IDs.

I think the biggest limitation with this is when the generated code from catalyst renames the components.

e.g. button1 or textinput2 no longer refers to the button or text field that you had intended after you get a recompiled FXP from the designer

Catalyst itself has a lot of limitations as well, especially when trying to adapt to a system that is already in place rather than building the system from the ground up. (e.g. you already have services or front-end dto/vo objects and the data list that is generated gives generated data property names that don’t apply and can’t be changed)

Anyway, thanks for your post, it was informative.