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List: koffice
Subject: [Fwd: The "Killer" application]
From: James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj () acm ! org>
Date: 2003-11-24 6:07:08
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I expected that I would get flamed about this so I posted it on 'Café'.
But, I received no comments.
Any comment here or here, or here?
I may not have explained this well enough or perhaps you have to be able to think outside
the box to understand why this is at one a radical idea and one that isn't really much
different than what is currently available, or what KOffice is supposed to be.
If you have used WordPerfect you should know how the WordPerfect spread sheet functions
and you should know that you can open a box any size any place in a page and create text
import an image or drawing and to a limited extent create content. I suggest adding the
ability to edit in place or creating in place any type of content that you have a tool for.
But you have to get outside of the application based box. My idea is that applications
should be be replaced by tools that could create or modify content anywhere in a compound
document.
--
JRT
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From: James Richard Tyrer <tyrerj@acm.org>
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Subject: The "Killer" application
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Note if this sounds like I am describing stuff that already exists, then it should be
simple to implement this.
This is based on the upper left corner (or if you write from right to left, then the upper
right corner).
We have the upper corner of a virtual quarter plane sheet of virtual paper.
The application includes a reader which will either display or print this virtual quarter
plane sheet of paper that starts with the upper corner. This can be ASCII, but that is
just for backward compatibility. If ASCII then the reader can format it in addition to
any formatting it includes.
But, the normal document would be in XML. In that case, the virtual paper can be sized
and consist of one sheet or a stack of sheets with default margins. The base sheets are
opaque. Individual pages can have margins which override the default margins.
This virtual document can have attached to it additional upper corners. These upper
corners attach a virtual paper with defined size that must conform in size to the
formatting of the base sheet. It can't extend outside of the edges and must conform to
the page breaks. These sheets can a stack of layers and they can be opaque or
transparent. In turn, these layers or the sheet can have additional upper corners
attached to them. There can also be a defined outline which can be non-rectangular and
known to the sheet(s) below it. If this outline exists transparency/opacity can be set
separately inside and outside of the outline.
Tables have proved very useful in HTML so they should also be available here. A table
divides a sheet into sub sheets which can each be used as if they were a separately
attached sheet or separate instances of the sheet the table is embedded in.
Each sheet or sub sheet can contain ONE type of content: Text, Bitmap, or Vector Graphics.
Now you should probably be asking the obvious question, where does the content come from.
First, I hope that you can see that this can all be done with XML in the same way that a
web page is made. This will be an XML document defining the structure and including the
embedded content.
In addition to the XML that the reader uses, it will also be possible to add additional
XML that the reader will treat as though it was a comment.
Note that each sheet can have only one type of content in it but sheets can be transparent
to give the illusion that content is combined.
So, where does the content come from. Each corner can be associated with one content
producing application and this application will produce the content for that corner. The
additional code can be added to the XML document and as stated above, it will be ignored
by the reader. In addition to content producing applications, content modifications can
also be applied to a corner to modify the content in a sheet (e.g. a spelling checker).
The effect of this -- how it sappers to the user -- is somewhat different than the above
description. The appearance is that you have rather than separate applications, a set of
applets that can all be used to produce content or modify content anywhere in the document.
And finally a utility which would strip the document so that it only contained the
information needed for the reader to render the content and convert it to other formats
such as PS or PDF.
Note that this application to some extent already exists except that it does not use an
XML file format and it is not separate components. It is WordPerfect. My attempt is to
propose a TOTALLY component based application that can do what WordPerfect does and then
extend it to include additional capabilities.
--
JRT
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