Keiron Liddle wrote:
Hi Developers,Keiron,
The current way that breaks are found with the layout managers has a
couple of problems. Currently the information is contained in both the layout managers and
the break positions. This means that it must follow the order: get
breaks: add areas: get breaks etc. So columns are not possible. The other problem is there is no good way to indicate that the end of
the page has been reached. (there are a few other problems that stem
from this)
So it needs to be adjusted a bit in order to make the process simpler
and more localised.
What I am thinking is to: - each layout manager adds breaks to a local list and returns and stores
information about the break
- it returns the last/best break, which contains why it is the last,
forced, end page, end contents - the best break is found
- once found each layout manager only knows that the best break is
within a particular child layout manager
- the best break is added to a list within each layout manager that
contains the best break
This way it can continue to find breaks independent of previous breaks.
It can restart at a particular break, using the previous breaks if
nothing has change (ipd or page) and open the possibility for disposing
of layout managers and breaks that have been added to a page.
At the moment I am finding it is getting too complicated and messy.
So does that sound right. (does anyone even know what I am talking
about)
Some disclaimers. I have been thinking along my own lines about layout, as you know, and that makes it very much harder to pick up someone else's very different line of thought. I have also been deeply involved with properties and the FO tree build for some time now, so I simply have not had time to focus on what you are doing with layout. All this means that I have not had time to read any of your code, and have only skimmed your documentation, so I may be missing the obvious.
With all those disclaimers, let me suggest that you take the time to draw your layout ideas, both at a large scale, and, when you are pondering detailed questions like this, at a small scale. A picture is worth a thousand lines of code, and anyone with restricted time to get across your ideas will be drawn (so to speak) into them much more quickly. I know it's time consuming; I have just a day preparing a couple of diagrams of low to moderate complexity.
So much for the plug for diagrams. I don't know whether my notes on laying out columns in the presence of footnotes will be of any use to you, and I suppose that you have read them before.
I don't know what you are talking about, and do not understand, e.g., why you don't know when the end of a page has been reached. A shortcut to an understanding of such things would be very useful.
Peter
--
Peter B. West [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/
"Lord, to whom shall we go?"
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