Reports: Utilization of urls

Geert Janssens geert.gnucash at kobaltwit.be
Mon Mar 7 11:29:33 EST 2016


On Monday 07 March 2016 11:08:50 Derek Atkins wrote:
> 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.
> 
That's reasonable. Agreed.

Geert


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