Re: commit: Start of Math support in HEAD + Math Plan for 2.4

On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:

> Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 09:52:54 +1100 (EST)
> From: msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au
> To: abiword-dev@abisource.com
> Subject: commit: Start of Math support in HEAD + Math Plan for 2.4

<snip>

> These are all safe xp changes.
>
> My plan is write an opaque cross platform class that provides all the
> hooks we need to implement GtkMathView. The src/text/fmt/xp code will use
> this to draw the math runs.
>
> The base class will include a rather useless xp implementation that will
> draw ??? or something when it encoutners a MathML element.
>
> I will move all the useful code in src/af/math/xp to a plugin and provide
> a new method in the XAP_App class.

I'm wondering what this will look like from a user perspective?

Something like a broken image icon perhaps?
Perhaps as a fallback a raster preview of the object might be made
available instead? (or an alternative textual description or title?)

Presumably any embedded object (including images) will need to reserve a
space (bounding box) somewhere on the page, and it will need to specify a
position (like how floating text boxes need to be anchored somewhere to a
character, paragraph, or a page).

As Charles mentioned it would be great if this could be treated in a
generic way. As Martin has said it would be difficult to come up with a
geniric catch-all API which is why I would only ask that he consider
creating a minimal API for the essential basics that we can be resonably
certain will be needed for most embedded objects.

> This call will only happen during construction of fl_DocLayout and the
> decision is simple "if" statement so it will have a very small performance
> impact.

This all sounds really great and I look forward to seeing it in action.

Happy new year to all.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

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Received on Thu Jan 6 19:10:59 2005