Subject: RE: Topic: Tables and 1.0
From: Tom Newton (Tom.Newton@gtl.com)
Date: Thu May 03 2001 - 08:59:13 CDT
I believe you can have one of two things:
(a) tables support done quickly, ugly unmaintainable code, many hours
debugging, and an implementation that doesn't import/export properly etc,
but sort of works. Until you rewrite properly in v5.0.
(b) tables support done well from the start that "Just Work".
Most applications go for (a). Certainly Maxwell did, and yes, tables (sort
of) work, but if you load a big (50 page ish) document that consists of one
big table it takes about 10 minutes to load. Got an 0(n squared) algorithm
in there somwhere;)
I read a book once about "Good enough" software, I think it was by Coad or
Yourdon (OO Gurus). Generally it was full of rubbish, but the basic premise
was that software just has to be good enough to get a job done, which is
what you're advocating.
Perhaps everyone who is saying "do it later" wants AbiWord to be better than
"good enough"?
Anyway, to get started on positive pointers on solving the tables problem,
the RTF spec is quite an interesting read, since it seems to be very much
based on MSWords view of the tables "world". Reading the RTF spec and
experimenting with MSWord (assuming you have it) and exporting various table
layouts as RTF is a very good way to understand how MSWord works WRT tables
(and everything else actually).
Tom
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joaquin Cuenca Abela [mailto:cuenca@celium.net]
> Sent: 03 May 2001 12:58
> To: Tom Newton
> Cc: abiword-dev@abisource.com; 'Eric "W." Sink'
> Subject: RE: Topic: Tables and 1.0
>
>
> On 03 May 2001 10:21:49 +0100, Tom Newton wrote:
> > My 2p's worth from someone who has taken part in development of a
> > wordprocessor (maxwell):
> >
> > Listen to Eric/Paul! Tables are _really_ hard. If you
> take a look at
>
> Everybody seems to agree that tables are really hard, and everybody
> seems to implement it but us.
>
> OpenOffice has tables, LaTeX has tables (and they has nothing
> to do with
> the Martin hack (a nice hack, btw)), KWord has tables, LyX has tables,
> Netscape composer/html editor has tables, Maxwell has tables, Ted has
> tables and, of course, Word has tables.
>
> I seriously can think of a single "sort of stuff to compose documents"
> that can not deal with tables. And don't say me:
> "{kword,netscape,whatever} doesn't has tables support, they
> only have a
> bad hack." They have something that works. Period. In the
> user mind,
> rtf import/export will only be a very little detail compared
> to the lack
> of tables.
>
> So, if instead of using a parental tone (don't take it bad, please ;-)
> somebody should start thinking of us as a group of competent
> programmers, and point to some links about *HOW* to do tables
> instead of
> just said: "I did it and it's a hell.", I will be grateful, and this
> discussion will be far more productive [1].
>
> Eric said <quote>Grafting tables onto a layout engine is a famous,
> well-understood way to slow it down by a factor of
> three.</quote>, so I
> deduce that it has to be *something* explaining how to do it
> in inet. I
> can easily find info about how to implement a piece-table
> (info that has
> been very useful to understand how our piece-table works),
> but I can not
> find anything about tables.
>
> So, has anybody a link in his bookmark?
>
> P.S.: No, I'm not saying that I will do it now, I'm saying that it's
> more productive to take a look at the algo's that we need to
> implement.
>
> [1]: that remembers me when everybody was saying: "modeless
> dialogs are
> *hard* to do it in a xp manner... oh, my god, how they are
> hard... don't
> even try it!, it's *HARD*", and Martin did it in a couple of weeks.
>
> --
> Joaquín Cuenca Abela
> cuenca@celium.net
>
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This e-mail is intended only for the addressee(s) named above. It
may contain confidential or privileged information and if you are
not the intended addressee you are not authorized to disclose,
copy, distribute or place any reliance on it whatsoever and we
request that you inform our postmaster (postmaster@gtl.com) that
you have received this e-mail. Any attachment(s) to this message
has been checked for viruses, but please rely on your own virus
checker and procedures. If you contact us by e-mail, we will
store your name and address to facilitate communications.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Sat May 26 2001 - 03:51:01 CDT