Tables improvements in reports

Dmitry Pavlov zeldigas at gmail.com
Sun Mar 30 14:54:19 EDT 2014


I've performed research about tables enhancement.
At first I'd like to list some of features that seems useful to me:
1. Fixed headers and first column. Good for large tables, greatly improve
visibility and usability
2. Table search. Add input to dynamically filter table rows.
3.  Row selection. Can be used to highlight row(s) and do not depend on
mouse position.

If you have additional ideas, tell me.

Now, I'd like to describe current state of gnucash tables.
It's not possible to just add some javascript lib (i've researched
appliance of datatables as a lib with a lot of features) and add all this
features. Here is the identified list of current problems:
1. Tables are not properly formatted, There is no thead and tbody tags
around headers and data rows. Fixed
2. Many reports do not use headers to format table headers. Instead they
use first rows in table body. This affects the "fixed header" feature, so
the first step is to move headers to proper place. But #3 blocks this change
3. Current headers implementation support only one header row, I do not
know why, but handling of headers and body has different implementation,
although the differ only in column tags and wrapping tag.

So the first step is proper implementation of table headers, to make them
as functional as main data, after that it's possible to include js lib and
add options to turn on features and after that changes start to fix reports
(move headers to thead section and add "enhanced features" management to
report options dialog.


2014-03-21 23:54 GMT+04:00 Dmitry Pavlov <zeldigas at gmail.com>:

> Ok, thanks for your feedback.
> First of all, I'll make some research and a proof of concept to test
> overall idea. I want to find a suitable library at first. Currently looking
> at https://datatables.net/
>
>
> 2014-03-21 19:51 GMT+04:00 Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu>:
>
> Hi,
>>
>> Dmitry Pavlov <zeldigas at gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > Does anyone plan to improve tables representation in reports? Currently
>> all
>> > the tables are pretty simple and they are not very convinient to use on
>> a
>> > large number of columns and rows. As an example, there is no row/column
>> > fixation feature.
>> > I think that using some js library would be a good way to improve
>> generated
>> > reports especially for view inside gnucash (without exporting to html or
>> > pdf), like it was with graphs, when adding jqplot make them to look
>> cool.
>> >
>> > If this is not in progress now and not on roadmap, please provide your
>> > thoughts about this suggestion, because I'm thinking about that for a
>> while
>> > and ready to try implementing it.
>>
>> Sounds like a great project.  Let us know how we can help you, and we
>> look forward to your patches!
>>
>> -derek
>>
>> --
>>        Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>>        Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>>        URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>>        warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>>
>
>
>
> --
> С уважением,
> Дмитрий Павлов
>



-- 
С уважением,
Дмитрий Павлов


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