Re: [Gnue-dev] GNUe Reports Output Markup

[John Lenton]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 04:36:22PM -0600, Jason Cater wrote:
> 1. The report definition shouldn't contain references to page sizes,
>    etc, for a few reasons:
>       a) Paper sizes vary by locale (e.g., US Letter vs A4)
>       b) For outputs such as html, csv, et al, papersize is
>          irrelevant.
> 
>    We might, however, provide *hints* (e.g., this report looks
>    best in a landscape format, etc)

this is implied by 2; I'd say yes to 1, no to 2.

> 2. I'm thinking in terms of a "logical" formatting markup, similar
>    to HTML, DocBook, or TeX, as opposed to an "absolute" formatting
>    markup (Postscript). I say this as doing such a format will make
>    the various final outputs (html, csv, pdf, etc) easier to create
>    from the same source stream.
> 
>    In other words, I don't think the report should denote <draw
>    label at position x=100, y=100.>

I believe you'll find that this makes it from hard to impossible
to work with preprinted stuff, unless you don't explicitely
denote <draw foo at (x,y)> but do implicitly implement it. I
think you should at least allow xpos and ypos attributes, as
hints if you want; these hints could be heeded by say the raw
text formatter and not by others, but I believe the DTD should
allow for this.

Maybe you could leave this out of the DTD, and instead have the
formatters read <?hints?>, rather like the various DocBook
processors do; I'd rather we did it like DocBook does it, with a
"role" tag or somesuch, if you don't want all and any tag to have
absolute positioning.

> 3. Some "final" formats we will want to support are:
>      * PS/PDF
>      * [...]

* raw text (with absolute positioning)

For dotmatrix printers printing onto preprinted fanfold. I don't
know elsewhere; here in Argentina this is still the preferred
method for printing invoices and the like.

Everything else sounds good, or I didn't get it. You choose.

-- 
John Lenton (address@hidden) -- Random fortune:
"Only a brain-damaged operating system would support task switching and not
make the simple next step of supporting multitasking."
-- George McFry