Re: Customer requirement, a critque

On 02/24/2013 10:51 AM, Tony Graham wrote:
> [ SNIP ]
>>>> 6. Is this a corner case Tony? I don't know. I can see the use where
>>>> 'which page this block goes on'
>>>> does not matter. IMHO your example is too specific?
> It is unusual, yes, and not at all easy either declaratively or through an
> API, or so it seems to me.  However, customers don't always come with
> problems that have nice, easy solutions, nor do they couch things in
> XSL-FO terms.
>
>
[ SNIP ]

Viewed through another lens it's not unusual at all, it's a filter. It's 
a formatting-time conditional with an 'else' or 'otherwise' that 
describes multiple processing strategies on the items of a list. I've 
seen this described as relevance filtering in reporting and BI, but hey, 
it's ultimately just filtering.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I can see how this would actually be 
easy to describe declaratively (where XML-based FO or under programmatic 
control in an API). It's not even that this kind of filtering has to be 
applied only to "formatting objects for lists", to refer to the spec, 
it's a concept that can be applied to any conceptual list in the area 
tree. Like  pages.

 From a formatter spec & implementation standpoint what you might do is 
identify what conceptual objects in the area tree are iterable 
collections that can have maps or filters applied to them. Build out FO 
expressions to handle what conditions you wish to filter on, have an FO 
filter construct that's basically a wrapper and applies to lists of 
areas generated by the wrapped FO.

Arved

Received on Monday, 25 February 2013 06:53:20 UTC