Re: [lmi] New Calc Summary

[Greg Chicares]

On 2006-11-3 13:08 UTC, Evgeniy Tarassov wrote:
> 
> On 11/2/06, Boutin, Wendy <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Wendy Boutin wrote:
>> > Ericksberg, Richard wrote:
>> >
>> > > 2) Can we lose the gridlines?
>>
>> I like it much better without the grid lines.

So do I.

> I was about to add an extra-feature to the calculation summary html:
> do you think that repeating column headers could help improve the
> readability of the calculation summary?
> 
> The reason to repeat column headers if usually the big number of
> columns and the person reading the table have to frequently scroll up
> and down to understand what is the column header. Do you think that we
> could repeat headers every 10 (or maybe 20) rows in the html table for
> calculation summary? Of course the excel tab delimited data should
                                     XXXXX

It's generic tab-delimited data, like
  "1\t100\t123,456.78\n"
  "2\t200\t234,567.89\n"
so any program should be able to use it. It's not specific to a
proprietary spreadsheet. It works just as well with free software.

> stay the same. I will commit the change : the table headers will
> repeat every 10 rows and an extra headers row will be added at the
> table end.

Actually, Wendy and I both think it's better without repeated column
headers. I understand the motivation for trying this, and it might
be ideal to show the column headers at the top in a non-scrolling
panel, and then scroll only the data beneath them. But there's no
time to pursue such an ideal now.

However, it would be helpful to insert a spacer after every fifth
row, e.g.

  1 123
  2 234
  3 345
  4 456
  5 567
          [this is a blank row, inserted for readability]
  6 678
  7 789
  ...

That would make it easier for the eye to move across the screen.
Is that reasonably easy to add?

Of course, when I say "blank row", I'm thinking an html <BR> tag,
but I imagine there might be a better way to insert spacing into
an html table. That idea applies only to the html. It does not
apply to the tab-delimited text, which shouldn't have any spacing
added.

>> > > Copy / Paste to XLS
                       XXX

Let's not use "XLS" as a synonym for 'spreadsheet': that's
free advertising for proprietary software, and
  http://www.gnu.org/server/standards/README.webmastering.html
| we avoid offering such free advertising

>> I just noticed that I've transposed my wishes for these accelerator
>> mappings:
[...]
>> remove the bitmap from the new menu items because they really
>> don't fit with those new commands.

I'm assuming that bitmaps and accelerators are entirely controlled
by 'menus.xrc'. If so, then it's trivial for us to change them to
suit our preferences at any time, and we don't need to make final
decisions now. Please let me know if my assumption is incorrect.

>> That behaves exactly as I expect and looks beautiful; I especially
>> like the pagination you added to the print preview.
> 
> Oh, that is a standard feature of wxHtmlWindow.

There are two different previews here:
 (1) the elaborately-formatted xsl-fo preview (required); and
 (2) a wxHTML preview of the wxHTML calculation summary.
I'm not sure that end users will actually find (2) useful, though
maybe Wendy will convince me otherwise. At any rate, it's built
into wxHTML, so, if we decide we don't want it after all, I assume
we can just edit its menuitem out of 'menus.xrc' and users then
won't have access to it.

What I'm sure end users would like is a menuitem that sends the
calculation summary to the printer--with the disclaimer Wendy
mentions.

>> > I understand the data format that gets copied is tab-delimited
>> > and the calculation summary displayed on the screen is actually
>> > HTML, but is it easy to make the calculation summary printable
>> > in addition to copyable? If it is, the disclaimer I mentioned
>> > in the preceding paragraph will also need to be printed. And,
>> > if the printability can be done, we'll need to add another menu
>> > item as well:
>> >    Print calculation summary Ctrl-Alt-P
>>
>> Ah, I think what you've done with this is better than what I
>> suggested. I think the preview element is a good final check
>> before printing, especially if the calculation summary grows
>> wider than one page. I wasn't so sure about it at first, but
>> now I really like the extra level of review before printing.

Wendy--I guess I just don't understand what advantage you see
in it, but I'm willing to be convinced. Let's discuss that
offline.

> Do you think an extra menu item should be added to the 'Illustration'
> menu? Something like:
> _Print Calculation Summary Ctrl-Alt-P
> Pre_view Calculation Summary Ctrl-Shift-P
> 
> Or maybe
> 
> _Print Calculation Summary
> Pre_view Calculation Summary Ctrl-Alt-P

If I understand this correctly, we've already got
  Pre_view Calculation Summary
and the question is whether we should add
  _Print Calculation Summary
. The answer is Yes: users want an easy way to print the
calculation summary.

> So that the 'Print' menuitem is still accessible through the keyboard
> via Alt-I, -P, but has no extra accelerator so that it does not
> pollute the global accelerator table.

As above, I'm assuming that we can trivially change accelerators
and icons by editing an '.xrc' file, so we don't need to make
any final decisions on those matters today.