Re: Google Summer of Code 2008

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 12:40:44PM -0500, Daniel Hall wrote:
> It is still very much a work in progress but it gives a good idea of
> what I'm working on.  This should add a 'Change Tracker' (bad name?)
> item to the tools menu.  From there you can start logging commands to
> an xml file.  At this point about half of the commands are supported
> with varying levels of success.

This is an excellent start.  Let's tune this subset of the commands
then start on the parsing side before doing any others.  That should
give us a better feel for what we'll need on the export side.

A few suggestions.
1) We should not need to manually call the cmdio_... for each
   command.   Please make them virtuals in GnmCommandClass.

2) Your question about element vs attribute now is clearer now.
   You've tilted a bit too far towards to element in this first
   pass.  e.g. write_position and write_sheet are both common enough
   that they should likely be attributes of the commands IMO.

3) cmdio_write_sheetview shouldn't exist.  The commands should be
   storing explicit positions, and we can discuss the utility of
   optionally adding a 'that was the current selection' flag.

Your use of <Command Type=...  is good.  That will work will make
parsing simpler.
 
> In the not too distant future, I'll add support to read from a
> generated file and execute the stored commands...similar to macros.
> I'll also be doing a lot more testing and adding support for the
> remaining commands.

The UI is a nice touch :-)

This work is going to be hugely useful on many levels.  Giving us
hooks for
- change tracking.
- logging / crash protection
- testing
 
> As this is my first patch I'm sure there are some glaring problems,
> but I guess that's the beauty of sharing.

Welcome aboard.  You're off to a flying start.