While going through old bugs to find any which can be closed for various
reasons, I found one requesting that report output be made available in
ods format. While this would be very close to what you get by importing
a csv output into libreoffice calc, it could have actual formulas, and
possibly better formatting. My initial thoughts were far too
simplistic, but in process of digging into the souce code, I came up
with questions.
It looks to me like the csv and html output are both handled within the
same functions, and are always both created, no matter which is
requested, and then only the requested format is output. I suppose it
doesn't make too much of a performance difference, but if we do add more
output formats, would it be worth separating them and only producing the
one requested?
In terms of how to actually approach producing ods files, it seems far
more complex than either csv or html. An ods (any open document format
file) is a zipped collection of several files, and while most of the
actual content appears to be in a single xml file (I suppose similar is
some ways to the html output) the other files are probably not simply
boiler-plate which can be copied. So - I started looking for any
Framework which might help wtih this. I have not yet looked into how
Calligra does it, but I did find kreports, which seems to be
appropriate, and although at least one description I found calls it a
framework, it is not (yet?) formally a KDE Framework.
I know this is not a high enough priority to any of the other developers
to be likely to work on it, but I have enough interest to at least make
an attempt. The only thing to lose is my time. If I did, I would
propose first separating the two current output formats, so adding a
third would be less "invasive" to the existing code. I would then also
start exploring both Calligra and kreports, to see if either has a
reasonably KDE way of doing this without reinventing the wheel.
One additional note - I see an early commit by Lukasz related to the
porting of the reports to a plugin, and also pointing out that the
graphical reports are handled differently from textual reports. I
suppose that's not critical here, but it suggests that the graphical
reports might also eventually be output as odg (open document drawing?)
files.
Thoughts or comments?
Jack
