Community Table Gadget Interest?

[sangahm]

One of the regular requests is for a table gadget for displaying data in a grid.

Through the generous sharing from jims, I have the source for his TableGadget. Jim gave me permission to share it on this board, with the caveat that he no longer supports it. While it is very good, it could use some new features (resizing columns, alternate row colors, data feeding, etc).

I can work (and struggle) on this myself, but I was interested in seeing if others would like to also contribute to the development in a community way.

I would like to emphasize again that jims no longer will provide active support or field questions, which I think is fair.

If you're interested, reply to this thread. Hopefully we can have the more experienced OrbC developers help design this for all to share. It would be a great add-in for newer developers.

-S

[samps]

Are you allowed to 'open-source' it? Then we can let anyone have a stab at improving on it.
We could ask Dewey to host a CVS or we coould use the one at Sourceforge. This approach could probably prove useful for other gadgets and objects as well. Just a thought.... Can I have copy of the source? Please...

Samps

[jims]

Yes, it's fine to opensource it. I'd love to see it live on. Just wish I was still doing palm development and I'd help ya with it.

[sangahm]

Great Jim. Glad to see you pipe in. Your code should give us a very good foundation to build on.

Does anyone know if there is a special process that needs to be done to open source - ie. add header info that says it's open source, list restrictions, etc.?

[dewey]

This would be a great thing to see. I would recommend SourceForge (or similar), since they are in the business of hosting projects like this, rather than OrbWorks hosting it.

[samps]

This would be the smallest project on Sourceforge (I'm NOT poo-poo-ing jims' excellent work) and I doubt that it will be accepted as a project.

I suggest we move the goal posts a little and maybe aim for a collection of gadgets/components, with jims' stringgrid/table-gadget as the natural starting point.

Any thoughts? Any more ideas for gadgets that you'd like to see developed for public use?

I'll be happy to put in the project submission to Sourceforge, I need an experience like this for my resumee

Samps

[sangahm]

I'm really surprised that there has not been more interest in this topic. Either others have developed a decent grid-type object or gadget, or they've moved onto other development platforms.

Anyway, I've modified the code to do away with the grid lines, add alternate row colors, choose colors for row & header, and other smaller enhancements. When I get some more time I may try and do resizable columns and column sorting up/down.

Thanks to jims for the code that got me started in the right direction.

[samps]

You're rigth. For a clever gadget, it doesn't attract much attention. Would you like to share the source with the rest of us? if not your own contributions, then, will you post jims original code so we can have a peek?

cheers
Samps

[sangahm]

Sure, no problem sharing the code. I tried to email you after your first request but didn't get a response back. Give me an email address to send to and it will be on its way.

As part of the code, there is great database management code too. It expands on the code that's included in the Survey sample.

[samps]

samps AT unplugd DOT com


Do you think it is possible to discern what is the gadget code and what is Deweys property? I'm thinking in terms of open sourcing jims gadget (and any other gadget that can fit the umbrella of OrbForms Gadget repository development), I don't want to include anything in GPL'ed project that is copyrighted otherwise.

Samps

[sangahm]

It's on its way.

You bring up a good point about GPL. I think the tablegadget is fine, but the database management piece may not be.

[samps]

A Sourceforge project is now a reality. I called it Open-Orbs and it is located at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-orbs


The project contains, so far, only Jims table gadget, now licensed by the GPL. The definition of the project is wide enough to accomodate a wide range of re-usable code contributions, so keep it coming....

-----------------

If you're using a free OS then SVN is most likely installed already (or easily installable using your preferred package manager). Check out a copy of Jims table gadget, using Subversion, like this:

svn co https://open-orbs.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/open-orbs open-orbs

Anyone can check out code, those who sign up as developers can also upload their changes to it.


If you want to use SVN from within Windows then you can get TortoiseSVN, a subversion client, from here:

http://tortoisesvn.sourceforge.net

TortoiseSVN integrates with the Windows shell, making checking out of files as simple as right-clicking anywhere in the Windows file structure, choosing 'SVN checkout' from the pop-up menu, enter the SVN server in question (in this case: https://open-orbs.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/open-orbs) and away you go.


If you don't plan on becoming a regular contributor of code to this repository, then it is probably easier to simply download an archive with the source and executables, from the projects download link (big green button) or get the individual files from the svn tree:

http://open-orbs.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/open-orbs/


cheers
Samps

Ubuntu user #82

[sangahm]

Thanks for setting that up samps.

I'll download Tortoise again and set it up. I recall that I tried to do that several months ago, and it was not intuitive what I was supposed to do. I went through the docs, but without a lot of source code control experience, it was not easy.

I'll see if I can get it this time around.

[samps]

TortoiseSVN has a startling number of features alright.

I did a standard install of it. Changed nothing from the defaults.
After rebooting Windows (necessary to enable the shell-integration), I right-clicked on a blank spot on my desktop and chose 'SVN Checkout'. I entered the URL as: https://open-orbs.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/open-orbs and added a folder name of 'test' after the path in the edit field that pointed to my desktop, just to avoid having what could be quite a messy amount of files scattered all over my desktop... that's all, and it worked.

cheers
Samps

Ubuntu user #82

[dewey]

I am big fan of SVN and TortoiseSVN in particular. We have been using it for OrbWorks sources for 3 years (CVS before that), and I have been using it for all my personal projects as well.