[scribus-dev] Tables GSoC - Weekly Report #2

[Elvis Stansvik]

Hi Craig, all,

Below is my second weekly GSoC report. The report is also available at [1].

Cheers,
Elvis

[1] http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/GSoC_2011_Tables_Weekly_Reports

= Tables GSoC - Weekly Report #2 =

== Work Report ==
* Fixed 4 small bugs in the scripting methods.
* Added a poor mans unit testing "framework" in the form a script
(tests/script/test_tables.py) that automatically runs a set of test
methods that exercises the table functionality and reports any
regressions. The script gives output of the form

Running table tests...
	1/8: test_construction()............. Passed
	2/8: test_insert_columns()........... Passed
	3/8: test_insert_rows().............. Passed
	4/8: test_merge_cells().............. Passed
	5/8: test_remove_columns()........... Passed
	6/8: test_remove_rows().............. Passed
	7/8: test_set_column_width()......... Passed
	8/8: test_set_row_height()........... Passed
100% passed, 0 tests failed out of 8

* Added CellStyle, a new type of style for table cells. Currently it's
as simple as the table style. New styles of this type can be managed
in the SM. Also made sure that table/cell styles are shown below the
other styles in the SM.
* Fixed the drawing problem in DrawObj_Post we were talking about.
* Added a new class TableCell for representing table cells.
* Moved some adjustment code for areas of merged cells from
PageItem_Table into CellArea, thereby simplifying the code in
PageItem_Table a little. This made it possible to unit test the code
properly and made me find a couple of bugs that I've now fixed. The
code will probably also come in handy when doing selections of cell
areas later on.
* Fixed a (silly) bug when inserting a row/column before the first
row/column of a table.
* (Somewhere around here made my 100:th commit, yay :)
* Changed TableCell into an explicitly shared class using
QExplicitlySharedDataPointer for its data. This makes it possible for
the table to easily invalidate cells that have been returned by
cellAt(int, int) when rows are removed or cells merged. It also frees
me from the burden of working with bare pointers to TableCells,
minimizing the risk of dangling pointers.
* Various small cleanups to to the table code.

In addition to the work listed above, this week I've also done quite a
bit of thinking about the painting of the tables and about their
internal representation. I guess like most programmers, I find that if
I make a long and hard thinking about the code before writing it, it
will almost write itself, whereas if I just go ahead and start coding,
it's easy to code yourself into some nasty corners. As I will have
limited time after the summer, I want the code to be
hackable/maintainable and clear.

== Project Status ==
The past week has seen a little bit less work from me than the last I
think. This is mostly because I had that dreaded trailing exam to take
care of on the Thursday. This is now taken care of and GSoC can have
my undivided attention. On the schedule for the past week was as I
mentioned in my last report

* Basic table layout with fixed column widths and mock content in cells.
* Insertion/removal of rows/columns.
* Basic drawing of table.

All three items are done, except I've actually removed some of the
first painting code I wrote as I'm currently working on proper
painting (more about this in Next Week below).

== Problems / Questions ==
No specific questions this time. You promptly replied to me regarding
that painting issue I had with DrawObj_Post(...). Thanks for that.
I've added a TODO at the fix in the code about this needing some
further investigation.

I do however have one non-code-related concern which turned up while
writing this report; I noticed that after malex did the updating of my
gsoc11tables Git repo from your internal SVN, some of my old commits
started showing up twice in `git log'. As an example, my very first
commit "Add a (very) rough first prototype of a table style." is now
visible as both:

0b17201cf816a883b80daae139f24c6a7c093939 and
0a8327820da7a88952744ac4a97314f075018869

in the Git history or gsoc11tables. The second one is the one that
turned up after the merging and it has malex as commiter and me as
author (Git makes a difference between the two). I'm no Git expert,
but think this may be due to the pushing of SVN changes into the Git
repo is done using git-svn. Ideally we would have no such duplicates,
but I'm not sure how to achieve it. So; malex, do you think you could
look into this? If it's not possible then it's not possible, but it's
kind of annoying when trying to work out the history of things when
old commits show up as if they were new. Maybe ask someone really
git-wizard person about it.

== Next Week ==
On the menu for next week according to my initial schedule is

* More advanced layout.
* Variable column widths.

But as variable column width is already done, and I already have some
of the more advanced table layout features such as row/column spanning
working (which was actually not in my schedule until week 7), it seems
I'm still a little bit ahead. So far, it seems that I've
underestimated how much work I'd be able to get done during these
first two/three weeks. That said, the work ahead is plenty and I may
well have underestimated the work involved in some of the later items
on the schedule, so this is a good thing.

My plan of action for next week is instead to start looking at one of
the items for week 4 in the schedule: "Cell formatting properties such
as border and padding". In fact, this is what I'm working on right
now, making some changes to the internals of the table in preparation
for this. I've had a look at the quite powerful styles for lines that
Scribus has, and I think they will be useful for my work. There are
some tricky but interesting problems when it comes to painting borders
on a table, especially regarding the order/priority of which border to
paint, but also when it comes to joining of borders that meet at a
corner or crossing. During my GSoC for KOffice in 2009, me and Casper
Boemann were working in tandem on the tables, and he was doing a lot
of the painting work, so I'm very much looking forward to taking this
on as it's new territory for me.