Re: Text Importer redundancy?

["Almer S. Tigelaar" <almer gnome org>]

Hi,

> Is the column formatting part of the Text/Import dialog (druid) of use?

It's being used for sure.

> Right now, each column in the dialog has to be formatted separately.
> Because of this, if one has to format multiple columns in the same way
> it is much quicker to import into gnumeric, muti-select and then format.

This is only quicker if you are importing a text file, not if you are
pasting multi-line text from the clipboard and place it at some 'weird'
location in your sheet and not all columns will have to have the same format
(likely).

> Indeed, it occurs to me that it is always just as quick or quicker to
> import then format than to use the third pane of the Text Importer druid
> and then import. If there are no cases where formatting must occur
> before import then I suggest doing away with this step entirely. It adds
> an extra click to the import process (minor annoyance) and demands user
> attention (bad).

The primary reason we have this 'step' in the druid is that the druid is
modelled after the text importers of other spreadsheets and thus also
provides the same functionality :-)

However, I'd have to agree with you that it might not always be useful,
the best approach seems :
1) Provide an optional toggle button at the beginning of the druid where one
can select if you want to walk through the format step.
2) Implement the multiple column selection.
(These are not high priority though)

Unless ofcourse anyone has better suggestions :-)

Yours sincerely,

Almer S. Tigelaar