Redirecting conversation regarding GSoC Project to Mailing List

[Heiko Tietze]

Hi Sarrah,

Replying from the UX/design POV, so maybe not really answering your questions.

The table style (TS) feature is supposed to supersede the AutoFormat dialog. TS 
are not only relevant on Calc but also (and probably more aware to users) in 
Writer. And access from the Stylist at the sidebar is possible there though it 
lacks a preview like in Draw/Impress. And the UI is missing to edit the TS. But 
the top PITA is this binary format.

* bug 49437: Writer/Calc: Use XML for serializing table autoformats instead of 
the current brittle binary format
* bug 105933: Means to modify existing table styles in a dialog
* bug 101802: Consolidate Writer and Draw/Impress sidebar table design content panel

The META ticket lists a gazillion internal issues that are also highly relevant
* https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101756

Previous GSoC project is documented at 
https://gist.github.com/ubap/55d22ef9b2e00347a2dc58ca4cb8b0ea

UI proposal by the design team at 
https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2015/12/13/style-your-tables/

Hope that helps,
Heiko

On 08.04.22 13:21, Sarrah Bastawala wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> Continuing here the conversation with Eike Rathke as instructed by him in the 
> previous email :
> 
>     However, I'd like to keep further dev-related and specifically GSoC
>     discussion on our mailing list libreoffice at lists.freedesktop.org
>     <mailto:libreoffice at lists.freedesktop.org> and
>     continue things there, so everyone can benefit.
> 
>     That being said, do you already have ideas what would be required for
>     a solution?
> 
> Thank you for replying to me! I would definitely be glad to solve an interesting 
> problem with your mentorship.
> 
> Based on what I have understood so far, here is the functionality we are looking 
> to implement in Table Styles
> 
> 
>   *
> 
>     We want to visually make it similar to the tables currently present in
>     autoformat, however it should be able to apply the same attribute to
>     multiple cells changing as more data is entered
> 
>   *
> 
>     The functionality for this could be referred to from the present table
>     styles in Impress and the functionality for sorting, filters, etc from
>     existing code for pivot tables in calc, if I’m not wrong. ( I would
>     appreciate if you could give me the code pointers for these to refer directly)
> 
>   *
> 
>     Also, as the bug
>     [#132780](https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132780
>     <https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=132780>) talks about in
>     detail, it also includes that the functionality is present identically in
>     openoffice with a GPL3 license, so I do not know exactly how that can be
>     used and how it would fall within the scope of this project, and hence would
>     appreciate pointers from you.
> 
>   *
> 
>     I’m not extremely well versed in this, but I assume apart from the hindrance
>     to user of formatting added data manually in Autoformat styles, the main
>     difference of table styles to that would be that instead of applying the
>     attributes cell by cell, they would be applied directly to the entire table.
>     I believe this would require some concepts of Object-Oriented programming to
>     increase the efficiency, and I think I could understand better from how it
>     is already implemented in Impress.
> 
>   *
> 
>     Lastly, I see that suggestions include asking users to use pivot tables for
>     functionalities such as creating charts from tables etc., so if we do
>     implement table styles, I assume we would merge it with pivot tables. Please
>     feel free to correct me if I’m wrong anywhere and guide me on how to proceed
>     further with this project and what resources would I need to study?
> 
> 
> Sincerely,
> Sarrah
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Dr. Heiko Tietze, UX-Designer and UX-Mentor
Tel: +49 30 5557992-63 | Mail: heiko.tietze at documentfoundation.org
The Document Foundation, Kurfürstendamm 188, 10707 Berlin, DE
Gemeinnützige rechtsfähige Stiftung des bürgerlichen Rechts
Legal details: https://www.documentfoundation.org/imprint
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