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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Variables
From:       "Dr. Robert Marmorstein" <robert () narnia ! homeunix ! com>
Date:       2010-03-14 17:22:43
Message-ID: 201003141322.44535.robert () narnia ! homeunix ! com
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> Would really appreciate some help in adding that, thanks!
> We use kde reviewboard, indeed :)
> We are getting close to the release of 2.2 (see schedules on
> wiki.koffice.org) and I think this should be aimed to be integrated after
> 2.2 is out.
> 

That makes sense to me.  I'll do my best to get a good (properly formatted and 
whitespaced) patch onto the reviewboard in time for 2.3.

> > Also, is there any reason we can't just embed new actions into the
> > existing collection in the "Insert->Variable" menu?  That would be much
> > more convenient to use than a dialog box.
> 
> I guess that could be done just fine, indeed. I was thinking about how well
> it scales. I can imagine a document having a LOT of variables. But maybe
> we have to do something smart there by showing them in the menu if there
> are less than 20 or so.
> 

I'll have to think about scalability some.  If the menu starts to get crowded, 
maybe we can organize the actions into categories (or by plugin) and use sub-
menus.  As a user, I prefer an interface which requires only a few clicks to 
insert, but I can definitely see your point here.

> > I know that currently only kword and
> > kpresenter have such a menu, but I would LOVE to have that menu available
> > in kspread, krita (when using the text shape), and other koffice apps.
> 
> Using right click on a text shape will trigger the shape-specific actions.
> You can get the insert variables added there if you add it to the
> TextTool. See the call to setPopupActionList()
> 

Interesting.  This isn't where I would normally expect to find the "insert 
variable" action, but perhaps for now that's best.  

> > It seems to me it would make sense to move creation of those menus out of
> > KwView into KoView.  Perhaps that's not possible.  But having a common,
> > consistent, and powerful way to insert variables into documents seems
> > like it would be a huge win for users.
> 
> If this is added to the text shape context menu I hope we get the benefits
> already in other apps, without adding a text-only menu item to a
> spreadsheet or a painting app. Which would sound weird to me :)
> 

Are the menus in krita et. al context sensitive?  That is -- do the menus 
change depending on what tool I have selected?  If so, I think it would make 
sense to have an "insert" menu in the toolbar when the text tool is selected.  
For some reason, that seems more intuitive to me than right clicking.

For that matter, maybe variables don't have to be text-only.  It would be 
pretty neat to (someday) have a variable system that supported images, links, 
and other rich media formats.  I can imagine having a "letterhead" image-
variable that would change whenever the letterhead changed.

> Yes, agreed. This is something I'd love to see. I made a plugin structure
> for this already; KoVariable (KoVariableFactory / KoVariableRegistry). All
> of the variables (time/date/pagenumber) are currently plugins already :)
> 

I'd wondered what those classes were for.  I think I see how this all fits 
together now.  Pretty neat!

> A big part of what I'm working on is getting KOffice in shape for 3rd
> parties to build on top of.  And your input is wonderful for that :)

Well, I hope I can contribute enough code to make all this worthwhile.  As a 
long-time user of several koffice apps, I'd like to be able to feel like I'd 
contributed something back...

Thanks again!

Robert

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