[scribus-dev] Preparations for GSoC

[Craig Bradney]

On 17/05/2011, at 13:06, Elvis Stansvik <elvstone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Andreas,
> 
> 2011/5/17 Andreas Vox <andreas.vox at googlemail.com>:
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> I'd prefer only two modes of operation: normal/selection + editing text
>> We can add extra controls to table items which allow row/column resizing and
>> selection. Same with context menus and shortcuts.
> 
> Right, I tend to agree. Three different modes of editing is cumbersome.
> 
> But to clarify, do you mean it should be possible to manipulate these
> controls for e.g. row height and column width in normal mode or only
> after entering cell text editing mode?
> 
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> My opinion: only grow/shrink cell height, but don't do that to cell width.
>> That way you can just use a text frame of the given cell width and ask for
>> its needed height. That's much easier than figuring out the needed width
>> (especially with multiline cells).
> 
> Yes, width growing tables is a pretty obscure feature, and I only
> brought it up as a side note since it's a feature of e.g. ODF tables.
> But again, it is obscure, and as you say, trickier to implement than
> height growing. In fact, it's only now, two years after my 2009 GSoC,
> that Casper in Calligra is starting to add support for it to Calligra.
> 
> But back to height growing. It seems a.l.e. is hesitant whether we
> want this at all, seeing as nothing currently grows automatically in
> Scribus.
> 
>> Shrinking frame height to text height should be added to normal text frames
>> as an option anyway (maybe as a vertical align option?)
> 
> Are you talking about a manual option to shrink the text frame to the
> height of the text it is currently holding, or about text frames that
> automatically grows/shrinks as text is entered/deleted in the frame?
> Is this an officially planned feature?
> 
> And does anyone else want to chime in on this? Should I aim to make
> tables that will automatically grow vertically to fit content or not?
> If I do, there'll naturally be support for turning off this behavior,
> or the default could be off.
> 
> Would be nice to hear what MrB thinks too, as he's my mentor after all ;)
> 
>> 
>> ...
>> 
>> I wouldn't use the borders of text frames. Cell borders are more complex.
> 
> Yes, unless we want the table borders to be really primitive, the
> tables will need to take care of this themselves, so I agree.
> 
>> The controls of a text frame are drawn by the current canvas mode. For table
>> frames I would expect different controls to be drawn to allow resizing of
>> rows/columns.
> 
> That's sounds like how I imagined it to be done.
> 
>> In edit mode I'd expect the margins/tab ruler to be displayed just for the
>> current cell.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> Last night I sat down and made a "dummy" table item and pushed it to
> my repo, just to see how easy/hard adding a new type of item to
> Scribus is. It was quite straightforward. The item can be inserted
> exactly the same way as the current table implementation, and it
> currently just shows the text "I am a table". Baby steps ;)
> 
> Anyway, thanks for the input Andreas!
> 
> MrB, would love to hear what you have to say on some of these questions.
> 
> Regards,
> Elvis

I'll be able to answer tonight via mail...

Thanks, the conversation is leading to the right answers I think

Craig