[Spam] [reportlab-users] RE: Visual editor: what are the objectives?

[Andy Robinson]

> We are starting our project for Visual editor (well, more like IDE rather than 
> a drawing software), for RL. However, it would diverge from the 
> recommendations above because we are writing it in PyQt/Qt-C++. So it would 
> be good to know some of your ideas, since you work so closely with the code 
> from day to day. I think, the ideas are cross-toolkit unlike whatever people 
> may feel about the GUI-toolkit :)

Well, if you are promising a plural number of developers, it sounds
like your resources outweigh anything else said so far - none of us
at ReportLab are really proficient in any Python GUI tool.

AsI think I said my main concern is installability.


> Basically, we have divided the task into 2 parts based on the current 
> organization of RL architecture viz., a page template designer, and a story 
> designer. 
> 
> The page template designer, is of course quite generic. The story designer 
> would support multiple editors for each type of object, e.g., Tables would 
> have their own editor, so would Charts, Graphs and so on.

Yes, that's exactly what I always wanted to build.  (Are you guys 
available for a conference call some time so we could exchange ideas
more quickly?  I could call up tomorrow or any time this week.  Let me
know by private email)

You mention Unicode.  We have a UTF8 branch which is nearly working - 
the only remaining major issue was the Asian font pack support which
I have not finished, but it's pretty solid.  The plan was to make this
the 'trunk' and release a "ReportLab 2.0", but this has slipped back a
lot due to project pressures.  If you or others can help, it would make 
a lot more sense to broaden the developer base and work in our 
repository until this has and passes the necessary tests, then make it 
the trunk and call it 2.0 pretty quickly.

My plans for "ReportLab 3.0" have always included a reimplementation
based on 'objects with metadata', so you can examine a PageTemplate,
Frame, ReportSectionHeader, Paragraph, Rectangle or whatever and work 
with it in a properties editor; and so that those objects which are 
drawable could draw themselves.  It might make sense in some ways to 
start down that route as a separate SVN project in our repository.

Best Regards,


Andy Robinson