Component sizing...

[Michael Meeks <michael helixcode com>]

Hi,

	It seems to me that there is perhaps a common issue that will have
to be faced here that is worth getting nailed down now.

	After playing with Excel and embedding various different types of
component I have come to the conclusion that there are 2 types of
behaviour a component can have:

	a) Auto size, eg. an Image is always sized to fit the bbox
	b) Self size, eg. a MS Word object

	It is rather important to take account of both behaviours. Since
due to the way that printing seems to work the dimensions on screen equate
to those in print it seems to me that the following must also hold.

	* There _must_ be no concept of pagination within the component,
each component renders a view equivilant to what is seen in the
application and it renders it to a single infinite print context.
Scissoring of this is then performed by the client application.

	* The advisability of scroll bars within an embedded component is
extraordinarily questionable, it would seem that this confuses me more
than it helps. Since there is no way the component can render a larger
area than it displays ( WYSIWYG ), the exact point of the scroll bars is
merely to position a viewport, and the number of degrees of freedom are
rather annoying.

	Furthermore, the distinction between auto / self sizing is really
annoying with the eog image component, the user has to select which of the
components he wants, and it seems to me that bonobo _must_ soon be able to
cope with doing this without 2 separate components. [ the Nautilus folk
added a scrolled image component ]. Surely we have to face the real issues
of negotiating size correctly before wandering down a path where a load of
components have an annoying dual directory entry with a change of
parenthetical scale ?

	Hmm; just sounding off I suppose, anyone want a fight ?

	Regards,

		Michael.

-- 
 mmeeks@gnu.org  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot