[scribus-dev] Tables as Summer of Code project

[Elvis Stansvik]

Forgot to say; I'll be hanging around the IRC channel under the nick
'estan' if you wish to chat.

Elvis

2011/3/6 Elvis Stansvik <elvstone at gmail.com>:
> Hello Scribus folks,
>
> In 2009 I implemented basic support for table layout in the KWord word
> processor as part of Google Summer of Code. This year I'm again
> considering applying for GSoC.
>
> I've always had a soft spot for Scribus, having used it quite a lot
> for doing flyers and ads in the past. Hence I started looking into
> applying with Scribus as a mentoring organization and found out that
> you guys are considering tables support for Scribus as a GSoC.
>
> Even though I'm sure you're very much aware that tables support would
> be a big undertaking for a GSoC, I would first off like to raise a
> warning finger, having been through it once; I think you'll be hard
> pressed to find a student that will finish something that can be
> called feature complete in one summer, unless the student is already a
> core dev. Although my GSoC for KWord in 2009 was considered a success,
> I did not finish all features specified in my original project
> proposal. The reason it was still considered a success was that due to
> the complexity of the task, me and my mentor early on agreed to have
> certain features as optional in the project description. Among the
> features that were not finished was table breaking across pages and
> interactive table editing.
>
> That said, I'd be very much interested in taking on tables support for
> Scribus as a GSoC this summer, provided that we can can conclude which
> parts of the support are to be considered mandatory, which are
> optional and which of them that are out of scope for the project.
>
> I have experience with Qt and C++, naturally, but apart from a small
> feature I added a couple of years ago [1], I have no experience with
> the Scribus code. Especially not with its core layout code.
>
> I did a checkout of Scribus and tried to get an overview of the code,
> and I must say that I'm a little worried; whereas in my KWord project
> in 2009, due to a pretty strict documentation policy in KOffice,
> almost every class and function was documented. In Scribus,
> documentation of the classes seems to be the exception rather than the
> rule.
>
> So I have a few questions:
>
> 1) Am I right in that a table in Scribus would be a new PageItem?
> 2) Would tables leverage Scribus' existing layout mechanisms by having
> each cell in the table be (or contain) a PageItem_TextFrame?
> 3) What about the ideas at [2], are they relevant?
> 4) Is there any "birdseye" developer documentation of how Scribus does
> its layout, from loading to final glyph? Classes involved, patterns
> used et.c.? If not, is this something that any of the core devs would
> be willing to jot down off the top of their head? Wouldn't have to be
> anything ambitious, just some notes. It would really help as a guide
> when reading the source code.
> 5) Are there any refactorings, big or small, that needs to be done in
> order to accommodate tables support? In my KWord project I was able to
> do my work in a plugin, plus some reasonably small and isolated
> changes to core layout code. What's the situation in Scribus?
>
> I realize now that this mail sounds awfully negative :) But don't
> worry, it's just me trying to be down to earth, as I know it's
> important to iron these things out beforehand. Especially important is
> to iron out what will be the scope of the project.
>
> If you're interested I dug out my old patches from GSoC 2009 [3] and
> if you want to read my blog posts regarding the project from back then
> it's at [4].
>
> Looking forward to your input!
>
> Best regards,
> Elvis Stansvik
>
> [1] http://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=7126
> [2] http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Tables
> [3] http://dose.se/elvis_stansvik_gsoc_2009/
> [4] http://estan.dose.se/tag/gsoc
>