Kexi/Plugins/Reports/Harmonizing with forms

From KDE Community Wiki

Started by Jstaniek 21:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

The goal is to harmonize naming and UX between the Reports and Forms modules. Since Reports are younger than Forms, and Reports are effectively a much improved and integrated port of a 3rdparty software (OpenRPT) to Kexi, most proposed changes apply to Reports.

Status: planning, in progress

Form Widgets/Report Elements

  • Report's element "Image": change to "Image Box"
  • Report's element "Field": change to "Text Box"
    • for bound element, display only name, not ": textarea"
    • display [>] icon for the bound element, as in forms [1]
    • Add property "Word Wrapping" (as in forms), set it to false by default.
      • Long-term improvement: add "Can Grow" property. Set it to false by default. When "Word Wrapping" is false and "Can Grow" is true, width of the element can grow. When "Word Wrapping" is true and "Can Grow" is true, height of the element can grow.
      • Long-term improvement: add "Can Shrink" property. Set it to false by default.
    • Property "Control Source": change to "Data Source"
      • Long-term UI change: move this propety to the Data Source Tab as in Forms
  • Remove report's element "Text" (and take care for not breaking backward format compatibility)
    • Its function should have "Text Box" (aka "Field") but with "Word Wrapping" == true
  • General
    • Long-term UI change: (Everywhere) Replace report's Position(X/Y);Size(Width/Height) with Geometry(X,Y,Width,Height) as in forms (use the same property editor)
    • Do not display #xxxxxx hex codes for color properties (this is technical detail)
    • "Line style" property type: display "None" translated text as the first item, instead of empty area (UX improvement, does not affect the format)
    • (Everywhere) Replace report's i18n'd property name "Horizontal Alignment" with "Hor. Alignment"
    • (Everywhere) Replace report's i18n'd property name "Vertical Alignment" with "Ver. Alignment"
    • When report element is inserted, do not mark name property as modified

Actions

  • When copy/pasting elements, paste at position of the recent right-click (as in Forms)
  • Rename "Edit Sections" button to "Sections..."

Long-term UI changes

  • improve usability of the report's Data Source tab