[scribus-dev] Tables as Summer of Code project

[Craig Bradney]

> So I have a few questions:
> 
> 1) Am I right in that a table in Scribus would be a new PageItem?

Yes, adding new types of items has become much easier in the last couple
of years (still within the 1.5.0 branch though, time passes slowly these
days)

> 2) Would tables leverage Scribus' existing layout mechanisms by having
> each cell in the table be (or contain) a PageItem_TextFrame?

Yes, however the text side is somewhat separated from the TextFrame
class, given there are text storage and layout classes.


> 3) What about the ideas at [2], are they relevant?

This seems to introduce a lot of unneeded extras or things that could be
done afterwards.

> 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.

Nope... unfortunately not. IRC works, emails work.. and the wiki works.
The more people collaborate via the wiki, the more gets documented, but
what exists now is very little.

http://docs.scribus.net/devel/ is autogenerated from the classes

> 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?

Per the above, new page item types are easier to add so while not a
plugin, it would be quite well isolated for the basics.

> 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.

Negative is not worth talking about.. realistic is. Reality will also be
more beneficial for a GSoC application.

Another thing.. if GSoC would not work out this year, would you be
interested in this via alternative sponsorship?

Also, per my msg on IRC, we have Jain Basil who was working on something
towards tables, but given nothing public has come of that for various
reasons on his part, however you should contact him and see where things
are at on his side. He might have a lot of design to lean on or take
over from, or be willing to share. Wasting work and stepping on toes is
not something we encourage.

Thanks very much for contacting us

Craig

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