Chart internal data provider: usefulness of having management of data in rows?

[Leyan Ouyang]

I have been trying to solve the following bug:
https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=134191

The problem is due to the internal data table UI not dealing well with
charts on "data in rows" mode. I don't think they can be created or
configured in this mode with an internal provider, but it can happen if a
chart is copied from Calc for example and the original data is converted to
an internal data table.

This "data in rows" mode causes issues in the label and categories
management and the data table UI. However, before trying to improve it, I
would like to see if we can simply remove it, as I see no benefits to it.
Is it really useful?

As I see it:
* It adds quite a lot of complexity, with many "if( m_bDataInColumns ) ..."
in the internal data provider
* It is still pretty buggy, as shown by the bug above and other issues I
found while digging around. If you copy charts like this from Calc to
Writer and want to edit them, you're going to have a bad time.
* It is useless: the data is internal and linked to the chart, so there is
no real need to adapt to existing data and manage both orientations, the
table can simply be transposed. Actually, it is already transposed when
converting from a Calc chart, which makes it even more baffling

On the other hand, it was added on purpose (more than 14 years ago so the
history is not clear), so it must have been useful at some point? Or was it
only planned?

What do you think?

Leyan
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/attachments/20201214/0fd2b477/attachment.htm>