OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

Here's the revised proposal for chart label auto position:



This attribute defines the position of the labels in the chart.
The values inside and outside are only meaningful for pie charts,
the other values are only meaningful for other types of charts than pie charts.


This attribute defines the alignment of the label relatively to the position point defined by label-position.

[I found horiBackPos and vertBackPos in the existing RelaxNG schema; the first one is "left or center or right",
the second one is "top or center or bottom".]


This attribute, if set, defines the label position for negative values.
Otherwise, chart:label-position is used for both positive and negative values.


This attribute, if set, defines the alignment of the label for negative values.
Otherwise, chart:label-alignment is used for both positive and negative values.


[In kdchart we also have the notion of gap or distance between the position point and the label,
do you agree with having this as well in the specification? I'm not sure which unit to use for it though
(kdchart uses pixels but of course that doesn't work in office suites; I'm happy with leaving that
aside for now to avoid complexifying the matter).]

-- 
David Faure, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).

David,

I looked at the earlier proposal and it appears to be defining 
north/north-west, etc. by illustration. Is that correct?

Wouldn't it be more precise (and interchangeable) to simply define the 
point of origin for whatever is being labeled and then define 
north/north-west/ etc. by their positions relative to that point of 
origin? I don't object to the labels per se, north, north-west, if that 
is an easy mnemonic but am concerned that we give those terms precise 
meaning.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

David Faure wrote:
> Here's the revised proposal for chart label auto position:
>
> 
> 
> This attribute defines the position of the labels in the chart.
> The values inside and outside are only meaningful for pie charts,
> the other values are only meaningful for other types of charts than pie charts.
>
> 
> This attribute defines the alignment of the label relatively to the position point defined by label-position.
>
> [I found horiBackPos and vertBackPos in the existing RelaxNG schema; the first one is "left or center or right",
> the second one is "top or center or bottom".]
>
> 
> This attribute, if set, defines the label position for negative values.
> Otherwise, chart:label-position is used for both positive and negative values.
>
> 
> This attribute, if set, defines the alignment of the label for negative values.
> Otherwise, chart:label-alignment is used for both positive and negative values.
>
>
> [In kdchart we also have the notion of gap or distance between the position point and the label,
> do you agree with having this as well in the specification? I'm not sure which unit to use for it though
> (kdchart uses pixels but of course that doesn't work in office suites; I'm happy with leaving that
> aside for now to avoid complexifying the matter).]
>
>   

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Acting Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
Co-Editor, OpenDocument Format (OASIS, ISO/IEC 26300)

On Monday 20 August 2007, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> David,
> 
> I looked at the earlier proposal and it appears to be defining 
> north/north-west, etc. by illustration. Is that correct?
The nice illustrations from Sun helped understand this stuff, yes. IIRC Bjoern offered
to put them back into the final proposal based on my previous email.

> Wouldn't it be more precise (and interchangeable) to simply define the 
> point of origin for whatever is being labeled and then define 
> north/north-west/ etc. by their positions relative to that point of 
> origin? 
Think of a vertical bar in bar chart. If you choose north-west then your point of
origin is the topleft corner of the bar. If you choose north-east then your point of
origin is the topright corner of the bar (and north is the middle point of the top edge).
So there isn't one point of origin, there are nine.

> I don't object to the labels per se, north, north-west, if that  
> is an easy mnemonic but am concerned that we give those terms precise 
> meaning.
To be honest I'm not sure why we use north/west/south/east instead of top/left/bottom/right.
Both the Sun proposal and the KDChart code do use north/west/... for some reason :)

-- 
David Faure, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).

David Faure wrote:

...

>> I don't object to the labels per se, north, north-west, if that  
>> is an easy mnemonic but am concerned that we give those terms precise 
>> meaning.
> To be honest I'm not sure why we use north/west/south/east instead of top/left/bottom/right.

I'd MUCH prefer the latter.

Bruce

On Monday 20 August 2007, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> David Faure wrote:
> 
> ...
> 
> >> I don't object to the labels per se, north, north-west, if that  
> >> is an easy mnemonic but am concerned that we give those terms precise 
> >> meaning.
> > To be honest I'm not sure why we use north/west/south/east instead of top/left/bottom/right.
> 
> I'd MUCH prefer the latter.

I asked the kdchart developers and they convinced me:
We have to realize that both position and alignment are used together.
So when reading "west, right" you know it means "west position, right alignment" without ambiguity.
However if we were using top/left/bottom/right for the position, it would read like
"left,right" or "left position, right alignment", it gets confusing.

I think the precise meaning of north/west/etc. is quite clear; "west from the item"
does mean on the left of the item, and "right-alignment" means the text is right-aligned
with the left (the west side) of the item.

Using a different set of nouns simply makes the matter clearer, it avoids confusion
between position and alignment.

-- 
David Faure, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).