[seam-dev] Spreadsheets in Seam 3

[Nicklas Karlsson]

Hi,

  Once the release-hangover from Seam 3 is over, I'd like some feedback on
the design etc. I tinkered with it a bit a long time ago in

http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/seam/sandbox/modules/spreadsheet/ and it
resulted in a blog posting at
http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/SpreadsheetsInSeam3

Here are some random ramblings on the subject...

Spreadsheet model
-----------------------------

I think it would be a good idea to have a generic spreadsheet model. The UI
tags (or a JSF table) could then use a builder to generate
the model which in a final step could then be used to generate the actual
binary spreadsheet. This would allow for more room for the user
(by observing events) to modify the model before binary is generated. The
same model could also be used for producing ODF documents,
PDF, HTML, whatever.

Formatting model
-------------------------

Seam 2 used CSS xls-tags for cascading various formatting from workbook to
worksheet and down to cell level. This was OK but had some drawbacks
when it came to more advanced usage (e.g. different formatting for different
rows in a column since the formatting was frozen once calculated for a
UI-cell)
I'm tinkering with the idea of formatting rules with "appliesTo(cell) and
getFormatting()" semantics (see blog and code) but I'm not sure how to best
represent
those rules in the xhtml. Something like

<e:formatting>
<e:font size="12px"/>
</e:formatting>

That could be placed at different levels (workbook, worksheet, cell etc.)
that are then translated into different FormattingRules in the model but I'm
afraid
it would clutter down the xhtml file. And I'm not sure how to make the
"applies to" dynamic down to cell level. Would it be possible to keep all
the rules in one place,
give then names and the have some EL-function that is consulted if they
should be applied to a cell or not?

Delivery mechanism
-----------------------------

In Seam 2 there was the DocumentStore servlet for delivery. What will the
Seam 3 way be for the reporting module? A JSF 2 resource handler?


Headless JSF rendering
-------------------------------------

Has there been any progress in this? Is the Seam 2
swapping-out-the-writer-and-grab-string approach still the current approach?
I tried bootstrapping Mojarra
in SE with mocked servletcontexts etc. but never got it to work properly.
The idea of JSF in SE for background processing of views is still cute, I
think.

-- 
---
Nik
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