(mgp-users 00516) Re: massive changes....

[Sam Clegg <samc@superduper.net>]

Buy, as you say, any table implementation would be completely seperate
to any XML ization process.
Just in case anyone was confused about this :)

sam

On Wed, Mar 14, 2001 at 08:23:08PM +0900, Alex Madon wrote:
> Hello,
> Yes! You are right ;)
> The first point is:
> 1) it seems to me that a syntax "a la XML" should be more powerfull than a syntax
> with newlines and percent symbols.
> 2) the process of tables is another problem. The challenge is that we want to
> format
> the table to fit into the computer screen. This is is independant of the syntax
> used.
> Of course, that would be very interesting to add (even simple) table process in
> MGP.
> 
> Processing of tables in general is very complex in general (see how Netscape's
> dealing
> with HTML tables...).
> 
> We  could begin with accepting "simple" tables. "simple" could mean tables where
> each cell doesn't need to be written on several text lines. As LaTeX was doing
> beofre it admits a p{40mm} in its tabular syntax.
> The good thing is that XML allows you to refine you syntax easily in time.
> A minimum sytax could be:
> 
> <table size="5">
> <tr><td>aa</td><td>01</td></tr>
> </table>
> where the size parameters is the only parameter you feed your table routine with.
> You can count the number of characters in each column and then display each line.
> Size would be the parameter that fix the font (it could be fixed before, out the
> table tag by a
> tag like <font size="5">).
> 
> The size parameter should be fixed at first by the user; later MGP could provide a
> function that computes the best size for the table to fit in the computer
> screen......
> 
> cheers
> Alex
> 
> 
> > >> In XML *you* define your tags.
> > >> Of course you can create a tag in your MGP syntax you could call
> > >> <table> that will then call special table functions that don not exist at the
> > >> moment.
> > >> But if you don't *want* provide functions that process tables, you just don't
> > >> create
> > >> a table syntax.
> >
> > Well, I agree. what I'd like to say is...
> >
> > When we have an XML file like this:
> >
> >         <booklist>
> >           <book>
> >             <author> author A </author>
> >             <title> title A </title>
> >             <price> $10 </price>
> >           </book>
> >           <book>
> >             <author> author B </author>
> >             <title> title B </title>
> >             <price> $20 </price>
> >           </book>
> >         </booklist>
> >
> > if you want to display this XML like:
> >
> > Booklist
> >       author A
> >         title A
> >           $10
> >
> >       author B
> >         title B
> >           $20
> >
> > this could be easy for mgp. but if you want to display it like:
> >
> >   Booklist
> >      author        title        price
> >     author A      title A        10
> >     author B      title B        20
> >
> > this will require lots of work.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > --
> > Yoshifumi Nishida <nishida@csl.sony.co.jp>
> > Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc.
> 
> --
> Megalinux
> 2 bis, Av. de la Rosi?re 13012 Marseille FRANCE
> T?l: (33)4 91 87 54 35 / Fax: (33)4 91 88 05 49
> 
> 

-- 
sam clegg
email: samc@superduper.net
www  : http://www.superduper.net
pgp key : http://www.superduper.net/~samc/key.gpg