[reportlab-users] Visual Editor.

[Bernhard Herzog]

Andy Robinson <andy at reportlab.com> writes:

> I think we need to look for "good starting points" - code that
> exists.  Ideally I would like a framework for a drawing tool
> which lets people click and move objects, and edit their
> attributes.  wxPython's OGL is very promising and we just had
> another post on that; I'd prefer a Python GUI framework which
> is not too tough to install.
>
> Other ideas floated in the past are
> - export something from Sketch

Skencil (formerly Sketch) would be a good starting point for this, IMO.
It's quite easy to add new types of graphical objects as plugins, so
there's no need to modify the core code for that.  Of course, it already
has suppport for may features you may want to have such as groups and
layers, clipping, bezier curve editing, gradients, unlimited undo,
import/export filters for a variety of formats, etc.

Also, in the current development branch the code has quite thorough
separation between GUI and logic, so it shouldn't be difficult to create
a completely new GUI if the GTK based GUI is unacceptable for some
reason.  If the first versions of a visual editor for reportlab don't
need to support all of Skencil's features and only some basic editing
and reportlab specific object attributes it's probably considerably less
work to write a custom GUI for Skencil than to create a new drawing
program from scratch, depending on what you need exactly.  

I'd be willing to help with this especially as far as the Skencil core
is concerned as time permits.

   Bernhard

-- 
Intevation GmbH                                 http://intevation.de/
Skencil                                           http://skencil.org/
Thuban                                  http://thuban.intevation.org/