Re: [office] Proposal for copy-frames

[Michael Brauer <michael.brauer@sun.com>]

Hi David,

David Faure wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> here's a proposal for an extension to the file format.
> 
> I would like a way to model copy-frames. This is for having multiple frames 
> that represent the exact same underlying data, i.e. perfect copies of one 
> another, and always so. If the user changes the text or picture in one of the 
> frames, it affects all the other frames that are "copies" of that one - much 
> like headers and footers, for instance.
> 
> This can be used for text boxes but also for picture frames: for instance for 
> a company logo, that must appear somewhere on every page, without being 
> inlined into a page header (which would be currently the only way of doing 
> it). But if the logo has to be somewhere on the left side of the page, a 
> header won't help. If you imagine a company logo _and_ the company name in a 
> text frame, this would be an example of when this feature is also needed for 
> text boxes.
> 
> My proposal for the file format change is:
> in order to know which frame is a copy of which other one we would use 
> something similar to the the frame chaining model (draw:chain-next-name, see 
> 9.3.1), where a frame specifies the name of another one it follows.
> In this case, a frame would specify the name of the frame it's a copy of,
> with e.g. <draw:frame draw:name="logo-2" draw:copy-of="logo-1" ...>
> 
> So, if I get the syntax correctly, the addition would look like:
> 
> 1) adding <ref name="draw-frame-attlist"/> to draw:frame (line 6153)
> 
> 2) defining it as
> <define name="draw-frame-attlist">
>    <optional>
>         <attribute name="draw:copy-of">
>             <ref name="string"/>
>         </attribute>
>    </optional>
> </define>
> 
> 3) changing the oneOrMore inside draw:frame's definition into a zeroOrMore,
> since a copied frame doesn't have any contents definition by itself,
> it copies the contents of the "copy-of" frame.

I agree, except that we should add a combine="interleave" to the 
<define> element to allow later extension of the draw-frame-attlist.

Michael