Reports: Utilization of urls

[Derek Atkins]

Geert Janssens <geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be> writes:

> GnuCash used to have interactive charts stem in the 1.x era. Back then
> it used an guppi to plot
> the charts.
>
> Guppi was replaced with goffice during the migration to gtk2 (which
> also started the 2.x series
> of gnucash). I was not part of the team back then so I don't know why
> this choice was made. I
> suspect guppi was never ported to gtk2.

Indeed, the issue was the Guppi was abandoned and wasn't ported to
Gtk2.  The closest tool at the time was Goffice, which is why that was
chosen.  Alas, Goffice didn't have support for active charts so we lost
the drill-down functionality.  There was much crying from the userbase
at the time, but when we suggested that someone would need to take over
Guppi it fell on deaf ears.   So here we are.

> The goffice based chart rendering however is much more primitive. In
> fact the only thing
> gnucash did was to render the chart as a static image, which didn't
> allow for any interaction at
> all. The urls for interaction were kept in place as a reminder this
> functionality got missing and
> for someone to eventually figure out how to restore it.
>
> This never happened until today.
>
> Then jqplot was introduced between 2.4.x and 2.6. jqplot uses vector
> graphics to plot the charts,
> which is supported by many current webbrowsers. In theory vector
> graphics do support
> embedding of clickable links [1]. So with jqplot we're in a much
> better position to potentially re-
> enable links. It may not be supported by jqplot itself directly, but
> there may be ways to add it
> indirectly. (Note: I haven't investigated this at all...)
>
>> Should we take out all scheme-code that comes along with it?
>> 
> Having said all that, I think we can just as well remove this code
> unless someone is willing to do
> the work to re-enable it. It just clutters the current code. If
> someone wants to re-enable it in the
> future, the current code is still in the git history to study and revive then.

I would suggest we leave it for a bit longer; now that it's been
noticed, and knowing that jqplot might support it, I think removing it
only to add it in again in a few months if someone wants to work on that
feature seems to be a disservice.

I would propose, instead, that we should slate to remove it prior to 2.8
if it's not being used by then.

> Regards,
>
> Geert

-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