Project Proposal for Calligra

[Jaroslaw Staniek]

On 15 March 2012 23:17, jigar raisinghani <jigarraisinghani at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>           Sebastian, one thing i personally like about Calligra
> Sheets(Tables) is its "IMPORT" feature. eg.  you have  10 tables in a
> document, Calligra Sheets extracts and opens it in 10 different sheets. This
> is awesome. But supposing you have to make minor changes in 3-4 tables, you
> would not like to export it or create new files. Rather than exporting it,
> we could just let the changes be reflected back to the original file itself.
> I guess extending the functionalities of SHAPE to create streams and wait
> for streams to save back the data would also be a nice method as Friedrich
> suggested.

We're limited by what the document standards say, here ODF's ODS. On
the other hand I wouldn't claim this is a limitation for bad. What you
demand (constant-time saves/updates) is an inherent feature of
databases, not spreadsheets. I am not saying can be developed but the
urgency is not high.

For more info one can refer relevant chapter in Kexi Handbook [1].

[1] http://userbase.kde.org/Kexi/Handbook/Introduction_to_Databases/Database_and_Spreadsheet

> As far as Calligra Words is concerned, i guess extending the functionalities
> of FLAKE/SHAPE would be better option as of now. My idea of opening tables
> in Calligra words using Calligra Sheets was basically to allow user to
> implement all the functions of Calligra Sheets using Calligra Words. But
> this is only possible if Calligra Sheets allows the changes to be reflected
> back directly.As Friedrich suggested, having ruler plugins for SHAPE would
> be best.

I don't think data storage has much to do with Flake shapes. Your idea
is in the use for years e.g. in MS DDE (google for it).
And this is planned as extra "nice to have" for Kexi since sunny
Malaga meeting in 2005 and stable, featureful Calligra is a step in
this direction.

> Moreover the above ideas of just extending the FLAKE/SHAPE to implement the
> desired features in Calligra Sheets and Calligra Tables would not disturb
> the concept of FLAKE/SHAPE.

I recommend reading todays Friedrich's post "Kexi reports based on
shapes.." because it is somewhat related in at least one area: my
opinion is that Flake shape is not a "kitchen sink" for
data/schema-oriented integration. Flakes can be more data-aware if
needed but generally I cannot see them as 'servers' in the channels.
Feel free to show otherwise...

> This was just a very rough idea of what i would like Calligra Sheets and
> Calligra Words to have and not my actual GSOC Proposal.

I would 'transpose' this idea and propose one nice challenging task:
making Calligra Sheets display (Kexi) database table(s) as sheets. I
know users that would applaud (Inge?) and you provided reasons why in
this very thread...

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jstaniek
 Kexi & Calligra (kexi-project.org, identi.ca/kexi, calligra-suite.org)
 KDE Software Development Platform on MS Windows (windows.kde.org)