Re: [office] Proposal for table templates

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

David,

David Faure wrote On 02/23/06 15:32,:
> On Thursday 23 February 2006 14:22, Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg wrote:
> 
>>David,
>>
>>I have a strong preference for solution A, because it is compatible with what 
>>we have today, and it does not require any table-template specific extensions 
>>to the style concept. For solution B, we actually would have to add a 
>>paragraph-style attribute to styles that we use for table templates only. For 
>>solution C (the last one in your mail) we would add a full style family, and 
>>again the style-name attributes that are only valid within table template 
>>styles. And we would get incompatible.
> 
> 
> Yes, but incompatible with table:table-template as of 1.0, which nobody implemented...
> I'm being pragmatic here. I requested table-template as it is in 1.0, but didn't have time
> to implement at the time, and OOo doesn't implement it, so why can't we get it right
> for the future version of OpenDocument?

Because we don't know whether there is some other application that we do not 
know but that implemented it.
> 
> 
>>In general, I think table templates should be as similar to real tables as 
>>possible. 
> 
> 
> OK, that's an argument, but then the solution B would fit as well: by adding the 
> possibility for cell styles to reference a paragraph style, we can use this mechanism
> both in real tables and in table templates. Especially if we can have empty table
> cells without any <text:p> in them (e.g. in generated documents) - it's certainly
> allowed in HTML...

That's a valid argument, However, we at least should move the paragraph-style 
attribute from the properties to the style element, because that's there 
other style name attributes are as well. And we should define what its 
relation to a text:style-name attribute at the <text:p> element is.

> 
> 
>>Even from this perspective, solution A seems to be best. BTW: It  
>>seems to be a spelling error in the schema that the attribute is called 
>>"text:style-name" rather than "table:style-name". It is called 
>>"table:style-name" in the descriptive text already.
> 
> 
> Ah; well, I think we can fix this, since as I said, nobody is using it yet.

I think we can change this. Not because nobody uses this attribute (we don't 
know that), but because it is obvious that the name of the attribute is wrong.
> 
> 
>>I agree that "table:cell-style-name" would have been a better name for the 
>>attribute, but because OpenDocument is already a standard, I think we should 
>>stay compatible, and should not change the name unless there are very strong 
>>arguments for a change. For exactly the same reason I don't think we should 
>>choose solution C.
> 
> 
> But solution A doesn't address the need to "let the user create table-cell
> styles which contain both a graphic style and a paragraph style", like we do
> in KWord. For this reason I would really prefer solution B or C.

Actually, I think it is not valid to reference a graphic style from a cell 
style to specify the cell's borders. Cell borders are defined by the 
<style:table-cell-properties> element. A graphic style only conatins 
<style:graphic-properties>. The border specification in the 
<style:grahic-properties> element therefore would be applied to graphic 
objects within the cells, but not to the cells.

Michael

> 

-- 
Michael Brauer                                Phone:  +49 40 23646 500
Technical Architect Software Engineering      Fax:    +49 40 23646 550
StarOffice Development
Sun Microsystems GmbH
Sachsenfeld 4
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany                e-mail: michael.brauer@sun.com