Thanks for your dedication. :-)
Please let me know, if I can be of any additional help.
Peter
Chris Monahan schrieb:
The key thing is to link them and let the Application take care of those
linkage!
that's the difficult bit, interfaces are IMHO one of the most
important and often neglected part of the whole process of adding a
feature.
But before we start thinking about such things the linking process
needs to be idealised. There are three ways to link 2 documents
together:
1: By file system reference, this is where the file contains the
absolute URL of the file it gets looked up and read every time the
linked file is referred to in the user session. If the file gets moved
then the link gets lost. However this allows for files to be easily
edited, and is relatively simple to understand.
2: Embedded, that is like OLE objects, one 'document' is actually part
of the other file, this doesn't make for easy organisation and editing
of the individual items, and it can restrict the relationships between
files if they start to get complicated, eg: number of files that link
to a linked file etc, but it is relatively simple and they won't get
lost.
3: Registered, like in OpenOffice base, this is where the application
itself populates a list of linkable data sources each with their own
name and ID, these can be portable so if the data source gets shifted
around, then you only have to update the system reference and the
other items just ask the system, and there's no theoretical limit to
the relationships between linked objects. However you can potentially
have clashes, if say you start dealing with documents that both refer
to a data source called 'library' for example. Also the process of
registering a data source needs to be intiuitive.
Personally I think the registering method is the most powerful, but
perhaps if the other methods were also available...
On top of this the task seems to be pretty much consisted of two parts:
1: enabling Writer to link to spreadsheets, IMHO the best way would be
for OO to use both Databases and spreadsheets as just 'data sources',
databases and spreadsheets are different, they are used in different
ways for different things, but both are perfectly reasonable to use as
a data source, but people use spreadsheets more than databases so it
only makes sense to link these if you're going to link databases,
right? The question is what's the 'right way' of incorporating linked
spreadsheets in a way intiutive to the user.
2: which brings us to the next task, which is to imagine various use
scenarios and try to make them as intiuitive as possible, defining a
GUI and a set of metaphors that are simple and effective. Peter: you
definitely have a lot of ideas, but they may not be the decided
interface that comes out of the working process, but er don't ask me
what -is- likely to come out of the fray, i'm still relatively new
here.
Still the concept and the interface are the main aspects and as a
result of this discussion I think 3 tasks should be filed, one for the
overall project, one for the concept of the linking, and one for the
intiutive interface.
I will do that shortly when I have a little more time... if no one else
does :-)
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