Re: [office] Proposal for table templates

[David Faure <faure@kde.org>]

On Monday 06 October 2003 14:41, Michael Brauer wrote:
> Anyway, maybe "row" and "column" (or even 
> "first-row" and "first-column" would be more intuitive as names for the 
> attributes "table:topleftcorner" etc., because the attribute then reads 
> as something like "take the style for the top left corner from the row". 
Indeed.
(hmm, first-row would mean that it would be last-row for bottom corners,
so this sounds like more opportunities for getting it wrong if writing it
by hand - or when writing converters). I think just 'row' / 'column' is simpler.

> I'm also wondering whether we should rename the <table:first-row> to 
> <table:top-row> etc. to use the same terms within the template.
You mean using the same element name, but different attributes?

> In addition to this, we might consider to also allow different styles 
> for even and odd numbered rows or columns, since this is something that 
> is used very often as well.
Good idea.

So the updated example would be:
 <table:table-template table:topleftcorner="row" table:toprightcorner="row" table:bottomleftcorner="column">
    <table:first-row table:style-name="graystyle"/>
    <table:first-column table:style-name="lightgray"/>
    <table:even-columns table:style-name="lightgray"/>
    <table:default    table:style-name="default"/>
 </table:table-template>

Suggestion: We don't really need both even-columns and odd-columns; if we define 
one then the other is 'default'.
This would also support <table:even-rows> of course.
I guess it would also make sense to say that table:default must always be specified.
In DTD terms (sorry, I don't know Relax-NG), this could look like
 (first-row?, first-column?, last-row?, last-column?, even-columns?, even-rows?, default)

> OOo takes the precedence rules of XSL-FO/CSS2. That is, a cell 
> background overwrites a row background, that overwrites a column 
> background, that overwrites a table background. 
OK - the file format specification should definitely make that clear.

> Maybe we should define  
> defaults values for "table:tableleftcorner" etc. that match these 
> precedence rules.
Let's see. As I understand it, the precedence rules mean
that if both a column and a row style are defined, the corner is defined
by its row.
So the default value would be "row" if both first-column and first-row are defined.
But if first-col is defined and not first-row, then the default value would be "column".
This makes sense - it's a rather rare case to say that first-column is red,
but topleftcorner should use the default style of the rest of the table.
(It makes it slightly more difficult to explain what the default value is, though).

> Since many office applications support such table templates, it seems to 
> be reasonable to me to add them to the specification. The only reason 
> that they are not part of the OpenOffice.org XML specification is that 
> OpenOffice.org does not store the templates within the documents.
> 
> A reasonable place for the table templates seems to be the 
> <office:master-styles> element. <office:styles> seems not be be a 
> reasonable place, because it is not possible to reference automatic 
> styles inside this element. This in fact might be useful, because 
> otherwise all cell styles that are referenced from the table have to be 
> real UI styles.
This is actually what we do currently, and I think it's fine.
But I see how not everyone might want to map table templates to real styles,
and use automatic styles instead.

Thanks for the input.

-- 
David FAURE, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).