KReport/API Changes: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:40, 30 July 2015

Note

This is a design document

Design creation

Started: Jstaniek (talk) 08:59, 29 July 2015 (UTC)
Task: https://phabricator.kde.org/T517
Code: ssh://[email protected]/clones/kreport/staniek/work branch nonvisual-T517-staniek

The goal: Make it possible to create, modify, open and save KReport designs without touching the Designer's and Previewer's API and dependencies (QWidget, QGraphicsView).

New classes and relations between them proposed:

KReportDesign: setContent(xml) loads, toString() saves, modelled after
- We don't use KReportDocument name for this because actual document is: design+data
- Addressed issue: .kreport format loading happened in KoReportDesigner's ctor without proper error reporting
KReportDocument: design+data so it's more or less takes KReportDesign and KReportData args.
- KReportDocument can be rendered on a KReportWriter
KReportWriter is equivalent of QImageWriter, can use files or QIODevices
- Inherit KReportWriter to implement what we so far call 'renderers'
- KReportDocument+KReportWriter is like QPainter+QPaintDevice
- Current API solutions are not the best, e.g. see KoReportRendererContext

[KReportDesign]
              >--builds-[KReportDocument]-->-is-used-in-[KReportWriter]--writes-to--[File/Screen/Printer]
[ KReportData ]

Usage in unit tests: KReportDesign, KReportDocument, KReportWriter (impl.) are first classes for autotesting. See Autotests for scenarios.

Headeless mode

The designer-independent APIs can lead us to a headless mode for report generation. Example command line for a kreport tool takes report design from file design.kreport employs the PDF renderer, receives data from data.csv, and outputs the PDF to file report.pdf:

% kreport --format PDF design.kreport --out report.pdf < data.csv

Qt Quick mode

Like for the headless mode, lack of QWidget/QGraphicsView dependencies is good for Qt Quick bindings and suitable APIs. This opens opportunity of supporting touch applications.

TODO

Rename KoReportReportData, it's not about data

Notes

During the API changes we have opportunity to rename Ko* prefixes to KReport too

@@ Line 33: / Line 33: @@
   % kreport --format PDF design.kreport --out report.pdf < data.csv
+==Qt Quick mode==
+Like for the headless mode, lack of QWidget/QGraphicsView dependencies is good for Qt Quick bindings and suitable APIs. This opens opportunity of supporting touch applications.
 ==TODO==