From: Daniel Berger <djberge@...>
Date: 2003-06-12T04:08:28+09:00
Subject: Re: HTML-table

Austin Ziegler wrote:
> 
> Daniel,
> 
> Can I suggest some changes to what you've got? I am in part
> suggesting these because I have to create a Table class for my PDF
> generator as well, and I think it would be good *as much as is
> possible* to make them similar. What I am thinking is an overarching
> Table class that implements the base functions and then an
> HTML::Table that inherits from it; similarly, a PDF::Table would
> inherit from it as well.

Sounds interesting.  I guess I would need to know more about
PDF::Table.  What distinguishes what you need from a regular HTML Table?

> 
> I'm thinking:
>   require 'html/table'
>     # Create a table
>   table = HTML::Table.new { ... }
>     # Create a table row
>   row0 = HTML::Table::Row.new { ... }
>   table.add_row(row0) # or table << row0
>     # or table[0] = row0

I originally was going to make Row a subclass of Table (and Data a
sublcass of Row, etc), but I didn't because they don't really qualify as
subclasses IMHO.  It was causing to many design problems, with
subclasses having access to variables/data they really shouldn't have
access to.  Maybe if I were a better OO programmer...

However, I like the '<<' and 'table[0]' syntax.  That's easy enough to
add, I think.

<snip>
>   table[1][1].configure { ... }

Yep, like that idea, too.

> 
>     # Finally, print the table
>   puts table.to_html
> 
> Many of the output options that you have are similar to what I need.
> Note that for HTML4.01 and later, you need a Table::Header and
> Table::Body as well -- the body can contain rows as well.

See "Future Plans". :)
 
> It should also be possible to create a generic table:
> 
>   table = Table.new { ... }
>   HTML::Table.to_html(table)
> 
> I'm just thinking it would be nice if we have similar APIs. I'm not
> there, yet, but I think this is more or less the direction that I
> was headed.

How about something like:

table = Table.new("PDF"){ ... }

This cuts it down to one line, and lets us define a default (which I
would vote should be "HTML").

Another option is to make PDF a subclass of HTML::Table.  I dunno enough
about what you're trying to do, though.

Regards,

Dan