Kexi/Plugins/Reports/Harmonizing with forms

• Started by Jstaniek 21:26, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
• Issue: https://invent.kde.org/office/kexi/-/issues/154

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.

These are all mostly low hanging fruits.

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..."
• Use KStandardAction for Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete context menu to get standard icons and translated texts
• For consistency display the Paste action in the context menu even if it's the clipboard isn't available
• Fix: Pasting not possible after previously copied element has been deleted
• Fix: disable delete/cut/copy actions when no element has been selected

Long-term UI changes

• Section Editor
  • Rename the window title to "Report Sections"
  • Add OK/Cancel to the and do not change the section immediately after clicking on check boxes
  • UI Guidelines broken; rename: Report Header -> Show report header, Report Footer -> Show report footer, Page Header -> Show Header, First Page -> On first page, Last Page -> On last page, Even Page(s) -> On even pages, Odd Page(s) -> On odd pages, Any Page(s) -> On any page; same for the "Page Footer" group;
  • Group Sections:
    • hide and add "Advanced>>" button
    • Show Group Header -> Show group header
    • Show Group Header -> Show group footer
    • Insert Page Break After this Footer -> Insert page break after this footer
    • Sort -> Sort:
  • Add/Edit/Delete/Move Up/Move Down should use icons and texts of KStandardActions
• implement moving elements between sections with drag and drop
• improve usability of the report's Data Source tab
• top area of the property editor tabs: display the icon and name for the currently selected object, as in forms ([2])
• Move "Save to KWord" and "Save to KSpread" and "Export as Web Page" to a submenu called "Export", to conserve the space.
  • Then replace "Save to KWord" with "To Calligra Words"
  • Then replace "Save to KSpread" with "To Calligra Tables"
  • Then replace "Export as Web Page" with "As Web Page"