Re: Next Generation Layout document.

From: Martin Sevior (msevior@mccubbin.ph.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Tue Apr 30 2002 - 22:01:38 EDT

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    On Tue, 30 Apr 2002, Randy Kramer wrote:

    > Martin Sevior wrote:
    > > Here are my thoughts for the next generation layout all compiled
    > > in one place. I'll start implementing this right away.
    >
    > Martin,
    >
    > Looks good! (to the extent I am able to follow it.) Would anything in
    > your proposal have an adverse impact on the future implementation of a
    > feature like collapsible outlining? (I don't think so, but I'd like to
    > ask.)
    >
    > As I imagine it, one way to implement collapsible outlining simply
    > requires (among other things) that we are able to hide paragraphs
    > (lines) of text and have (visible) paragraphs below them "roll up" to
    > cover the empty spaces.
    >
    > For example, if we had a document like this:
    >
    > A Heading
    > B Heading
    > B.1 Heading
    > Text
    > B.2 Heading
    > Text
    > C Heading
    >
    > And we chose to collapse the outline to only show level 1 headings, it
    > should then look like:
    >
    > A Heading
    > B Heading
    > C Heading
    >

    Actually the old layout structure would do this as will the new one. We
    already have a colloapse() method on the blocklayouts and in fact this
    will be generalized to all layout classes. The new layout structure will
    be able to do collapsable outlining too.

    What it needs is for someone to think through a good UI and handle all the
    situations when some piece of code assumes a line exists when
    it doesn't. Fire up gdb and fix all the segfaults :-)

    It would actually be a good project for an experienced coder to get their
    hands really dirty with abiword code.

    It could have been done for 1.0.0 but we didn't have time....

    Cheers

    Martin



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