Implementing my ideas in write/report activity using pyabiword

Hi all,

I just wanted to discuss the ideas which I am planning and implemented
in the write/report activity. I was trying to use multiple instances
of abiword.Canvas, however, they seem to be a bit unreliable as the
activity crashes some time. So, I would like to discuss these ideas
with you people, so that it would be great if anyone could suggest to
implement these features in some other and easier ways. Here are
they--

1. I need to have a starting screen which gives options of choosing
b/w options of building your own templates or to use the already
designed ones. Moreover, if I opt for the 2nd one, then I should get
all the already designed templates in png forms to choose from. ----
Using a notebook in order to maintain seperate 2 pages for these and
the 3rd one as a abiword.Canvas for actual working and switching b/w
them.

2. I want that whenever a person uses a template to design the
documents, whenever he adds a new page, all the new pages added should
already be loaded with the 2nd page of the template,they should look
like the 2nd page of the template. ----- I am loading another page to
the notebook containing the 2nd page of the template using
abiword.canvas . Now, by using the select_all and copy commands of
Canvas on the newly loaded doc, I am bringing the content of the 2nd
page to the clipboard and then pasting it on the first page. All this
is done programmatically ie when the user clicks on the button to add
a new page all this should happen automatically.

3. The textboxes which we make by dragging in abiword, should be able
to be added by default in 3 shapes, ie I should provide options so
that when the user clicks on a particular shape of a textbox , that
shape should be automatically added. Moreover, the heading textbox
should by default have big fonts , bold ones, and so on for
others----- A similar approach like 2nd, already saved documents
containing one type of box each , whenever a user wants a particular
one, loads corresponding shape , select_all, copy and paste.

4. Adding shapes--- would be using by default png images as svg is not
supported as of now, and whenever the user clicks on a particular
shape and color would load that particuar image using the
insert_image.

5. We should be able to come back to the main menu ie if we are
working on a particular doc and then the user decides to come back to
the main menu to load some other template, then the one he is working
on should be saved and new one must be loaded instead. ----- Well, one
way was to load the new one to a new page of the notebook , show that
page and save the earlier one. Otherway might be to save the current
one, load the new one to the same page and save this one with a new
name.

I have already implemented all these. However, the point is that
sometimes it works fine and sometimes the activity crashes, due to
loading multiple abiword.canvas thing. I am also trying to do it with
vbox, if it works. I know the implementation might be foolish at
places, I am not very well aquainted to the power of pyabiword but I
would be happy enough if anybody could suggest better and easier ways
to implement them.

Regards,
sumit
Received on Fri Jul 24 21:09:16 2009