questions on report output

[Jack]

While going through old bugs to find any which can be closed for various 
reasons, I found one requesting that report output be made available in 
ods format.  While this would be very close to what you get by importing 
a csv output into libreoffice calc, it could have actual formulas, and 
possibly better formatting.  My initial thoughts were far too 
simplistic, but in process of digging into the souce code, I came up 
with questions.

It looks to me like the csv and html output are both handled within the 
same functions, and are always both created, no matter which is 
requested, and then only the requested format is output. I suppose it 
doesn't make too much of a performance difference, but if we do add more 
output formats, would it be worth separating them and only producing the 
one requested?

In terms of how to actually approach producing ods files, it seems far 
more complex than either csv or html.  An ods (any open document format 
file) is a zipped collection of several files, and while most of the 
actual content appears to be in a single xml file (I suppose similar is 
some ways to the html output) the other files are probably not simply 
boiler-plate which can be copied. So - I started looking for any 
Framework which might help wtih this. I have not yet looked into how 
Calligra does it, but I did find kreports, which seems to be 
appropriate, and although at least one description I found calls it a 
framework, it is not (yet?) formally a KDE Framework.

I know this is not a high enough priority to any of the other developers 
to be likely to work on it, but I have enough interest to at least make 
an attempt.  The only thing to lose is my time. If I did, I would 
propose first separating the two current output formats, so adding a 
third would be less "invasive" to the existing code.  I would then also 
start exploring both Calligra and kreports, to see if either has a 
reasonably KDE way of doing this without reinventing the wheel.

One additional note - I see an early commit by Lukasz related to the 
porting of the reports to a plugin, and also pointing out that the 
graphical reports are handled differently from textual reports.  I 
suppose that's not critical here, but it suggests that the graphical 
reports might also eventually be output as odg (open document drawing?) 
files.

Thoughts or comments?

Jack