[GSoC] Enhanced database ranges, some clarification needed.

[Kohei Yoshida]

Hello Akash,

First of all, thanks for your inquiry, and sorry it took awhile for me to
respond.

On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 4:16 PM, Akash Shetye <shetyeakash at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Kohei,
>
> Since you are the mentor for the enhanced database ranges task, I am
> writing to you some questions and outlines I wanted to discuss. (keeping
> them as brief as possible)
>
> *Alternate row coloring in database ranges:*
>
>    - Currently if I want to do that I'll need to highlight the range and
>    go to Format->Conditional Formatting->Condition and then use a formula
>    "=MOD(ROW()-1,1*2)+1>1" which will color alternate rows.
>
> Yup. That's currently what the users have to do to emulate the same effect
in the absence of the feature.

>
>    - Many such twisted formulas exist for various styles we see in the
>    "Format as Table" option in MS Excel. The user selects a style through a
>    dialog to select "First row stripe", "Xth row stripe" etc. see this.<http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/questions/cond_format6_2010.php>Many styles could be brought together as well by simply ORing the
>    corresponding formulas of these selections.
>
> Right.

>
>    -
>    - Since formulas for each of these styles are available, we can
>    redirect the user to the Format->Conditional Formatting->Condition dialog,
>    with the formula field filled with the corresponding formula and the field
>    being set un-editable.
>    - The user can now select whatever style or formatting he wants to
>    apply to the condition.
>    - Tell me what do you think about this approach.
>
> Ok. So, this to me sounds more like a workaround than a feature. What I
want to see happen is to have this formatted table feature implemented
properly so that the users don't have to emulate this using the conditional
formatting.  This means that this feature will be implemented independent
of the conditional formatting code, and your proposal would need to reflect
that point. Redirecting it to conditional formatting is not a good idea.


> *New reference syntax in formula expressions:*
>
>    - I an guessing "field names" means the same thing as "column labels"
>    in MicroSoft lingo which is the Text in the first row of the column? I
>    haven't yet went ahead and explored this, will do that soon.
>
> Yes.  I used "field names" only because I didn't know what the right
terminology for this is.  We can call this "column labels" to avoid
confusion in our future discussion. That's not a problem. Have a look
around ScCompiler which is our main formula expression tokenizer. Note that
half of the parsing is done in its parent class FormulaCompiler (in the
formula module), you'll need to trace that class as well, to understand how
the code works.

>
>    -
>
> On a different note, I wanted to know if the bug I have fixed #51296<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=51296>qualifies as an easy hack, that I have cleared the prerequisite of fixing a
> bug off the easy hacks page.
>
So, technically that should suffice; however, I normally ask applicants
applying for my proposed project to demonstrate some competency in the
areas relevant to the project. In this particular case, you would be
working with ScDBData, which is an internal representation of Calc's
database range (equivalent of Table in Excel), and ScDbNameDlg which
implements the "Define Database Range" dialog. So, I'd like you to consider
making some changes in this area in addition to the required easy hack,
which is just a bare minimum requirement.

> Also do tell me the timings you usually hang out at the IRC.
>
The best time to catch me on IRC is in my afternoon time (my timezone is US
Eastern).  I'm normally on IRC after ~9 am, but normally I spend my morning
time catching up with my coworkers etc, so it's not the best time to get a
hold of me. Things usually die down in the afternoon, which is probably the
best time. What time zone are you in?

Kohei
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