[dotgrid-general] Bits and Bobs

[Tobin H. <com...@ho...>]

Hi there,

Just thought I'd write a quick message to introduce myself to the team. 
Before I go into it, sorry about all the test messages! For some reason my 
posts weren't showing up - must be a delay in them being processed - anyone 
know typically how long this delay is?

About me
=======
Well, I'm 27 years old and working as a web/applications developer in Leeds, 
UK. I saw this project and thought it was a good idea, and definately a 
useful one. I actually started the SqlBuddy project (here on SourceForge), 
which is an IDE for SqlServer (and hopefully other databases one day), and 
is written in c#. So, one reason I liked the idea of this project is that I 
could use a better grid in SqlBuddy!

I've been working in dotnet only since September 02, and developing software 
for about 3 years commercially.

Project Suggestions
============
As requested, I've thought of a few things I'd like to see DotGrid do. I'm 
sure I'll think of more though!

- Binding to IDataReader: It would be nice if the grid could be bound to a 
datareader (I think!)

- Binding to DataSet (obviously!)

- Row Resizing: it would be nice if row depth could be resized en masse, 
rather than individually. So changing the depth of one row would reseize the 
others also.

- Column Resizing: it would be cool if columns could have built in 
width-sizing strategies. For example, for large text fields the width would 
be set nice n' wide (but not wider than the screen).

- Export strategies: it could be useful to be able to plug in a standard set 
of data exporters, such as an XML exporter, a HTML exporter, CSV, a Fixed 
ASCII exporter etc. This could be a common interface to allow further 
exporters to be written.

- Property Grid Mode: This would pivot the data like this:

Id: 1
Name: Jo Bloggs
Address: blah

So you have record one per page. You could switch views at runtime, so you 
could work with the data in different ways. Justing thinking on the fly 
here!

Case Tool
======

Valerio mentioned that we're looking for a case tool for the project. I 
imagine we'll want to use a free one, and the following come to mind.

- ArgoUML: this gets good reviews, although I've not used it on a project
- Psoiden UML (?) - based on Argo, but a company is funding it. They do 
still maintain a free communitity edition. Again, I've not used it.
- Objecteering: These guys do a personal edition, which I've used and I 
like.
- There's others too, some which are really just scratch-pads for UML. I 
like these for lightweights stuff.

I suppose it depends what we need to do with the tool. More specifically:

- Lightweight Documentation?
- Code Generation?
- Version Control Diagrams?

Ok, that's enough of my rant.

Cheers

Tobin

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