From: Martin Sevior (msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Aug 26 2002 - 13:02:31 EDT
On Mon, 26 Aug 2002, Alan Horkan wrote:
>
> nice interface, the graphics are conceptually very clear.
> I wonder if you based it on anything in particular.
No. This was my own idea. I looked at the Word 2000 interface. It is not
bad but it will be difficult to implement in the short term for us. We
would need a way of grouping selections instead of having just one
selection as we do now. For us a selection of cells on different rows
would require us to have one selection per row. We would need to make
substantional changes to FV_View to do this. This is a 15,000 line method
and reachesout to all sorts of other places in the code. It is possible
and to do other things with tables (Like copying and pasting a whole
column) we will have to deal with it.
The idea came to me after reading Seth Nicol's Human Interface Guide.
Particularly the part about changes being immediately effective. Also the
process of selecting cells first then merging them is actually a bit
harder than this technique I think.
>
> i have word97 in front of me, if you dont have multiple cells selected it
> does not let you merge them. otherwise it just merges the selected cells.
>
With our interface you just place the cursor in the first cell you want to
merge then press your favourite merge direction. Keep clicking until
you've mapped out the merged set you want.
> Does the dialog always appear
even if there are already any cells > selected?
Yes the dialog will always appear. If the cursor is not in a table the
controls will be greyed out and insensitive. As soon as you move the
cursor into a table the appropriate controls become active.
>
> I was going to ask if you have added a merge cells button to the toolbar,
> but tables will definatley need a whole new toolbar of their own and i
> would not want to distract you from the solid backend work you are doing.
>
I haven't thought about this but it would not be hard to implement. If
someone wants to do it please go ahead! Actually the toolbar control I'd
really want is the cool graphical "insert table" control in Word 2000/Word
Perfect where you select the size of the table you want graphically.
> I can tell when this is finished it is going to be really powerful and
> worth waiting for.
> Sweet!
>
Thanks! When the backend is finished the next thing I want to do is
import/export tables to RTF. This should not be too hard.
Cheers
Martin
> Later
> Alan
>
> On 26 Aug 2002, Martin Sevior wrote:
>
> > Date: 26 Aug 2002 15:28:58 +1000
> > From: Martin Sevior <msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au>
> > To: abiword-dev@abisource.com
> > Subject: commit: Merge Cells
> >
> >
> > OK here is MergeCells.
> >
> > It mostly works although there are still bugs in the backend. Merging
> > cells of differing sizes is not fully debugged but this will get fixed
> > soon enough.
> >
> > The GUI is a modeless dialog. See
> >
> >
> > http://www.ph.unimelb.edu.au/~msevior/abiword/mergeCells.png
> >
> > After firing it up you click on merge left/ merge right/merge
> > above/merge below to build up the collection of merged cells you want in
> > the table.
>
> > A single click on the merge button implements the command and you see
> > the results instantly on the screen. You can move the cursor about the
> > table with arrow keys with the dialog active and press undo to backout a
> > change you don't want. You can also keep on typing etc the way you
> > normally can with a Modeless dialog.
>
>
> > Anyway enjoy Cell merging. Apart from being useful I find it quite fun
> > :-)
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Martin
> >
> > Checking in text/fmt/xp/fp_TableContainer.cpp;
>
>
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