[lmi] tasks 2007: bug 105588, 105589 and 105590: supplemental-report

[Evgeniy Tarassov]

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Explain supplemental-report columns
http://savannah.nongnu.org/support/?105588
   Supplemental reports should say what each column means. A brief
   list of definitions would work. A "loan repaid at death" column,
   e.g., could use a note explaining whether it includes interest.
   IRR columns generally treat net outlay as the payment stream; that
   should also be documented. This would make illustrations easier to
   understand and harder to misunderstand.

Just some thoughts: today's lmi calculation summary is represented as
a table with a column per value requested, it would be difficult to
squeeze column desciption into the same column (as a first row or as a
last row), therefore it should be probably added as a separate table
(legend?) after (or before) the calculation summary. One requested
feature is to support multiple calculation summaries -- would not it
be simplier to add such a legend as an annexe to the entire output?
For calculation summary we could show tooltips (or something similar)
for column headers, or maybe to make supplemental report headers to be
links pointing to an online page describing columns. Also generation
of such an annexe describing column meaning could be an external
document or an optional feature (a checkbox on the supplemental report
tab).

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Allow multiple supplemental reports
http://savannah.nongnu.org/support/?105589
   An illustration can have only one supplemental report today; more
   should be allowed. For example, a COLI case with distributions may
   need a distribution report and a cash-flow report. Running them
   separately is not a good option: they'd have two signature pages,
   and they'd be mostly redundant.

UI: Coupled with the next feature it could be implemented as an
additional list on the supplemental report tab. Such a list would
contain predefined supplemental report set names.
XSL: it will be necessary to slightly modify xsl templates to allow
arrays of column sets as input.
Plus changes to the code to handle lists of sets of strings (probably
to extract column set as a separate class/structure?)

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Save and retrieve supplemental reports
http://savannah.nongnu.org/support/?105590
   Let users save and retrieve supplemental reports they design. It
   is inconvenient to select columns manually.

   Analysis: A reasonable workaround is to save an input file with
   a set of columns selected, then clone it to create new files. The
   default input file can save exactly one set of columns, and each
   user can configure it independently.

For me the supplemental report column set represents a type of the
output desired by user and not a particular instance of a document.
Should not it be saved in some sort of persistent storage on the user
machine (configurable_settings? or another file containing personal
user settings)? In UI it could be implemented as a an additional group
of controls on the supplemental report tab. Something like:

|v|----Cash-Flow-|   |save+set|   |delete+set|

|v|--Column-1|
|v|--Column-2|
|v|--Column-3|
|v|--Column-4|

Where the 'Cash Flow' drop down list represent a supplemental report
column set name, and two buttons 'save set' and 'delete set' do save
and delete currently selected set. That drop-down list should allow
free modification of its current value so that new sets could be
created by enetering a new label into that drop-down control and
pressing 'save set'.

Such an information could be stored in configurable_settings as it is
done for calculation summary columns set, or in a new file.