[OT] LC's Fields of the Future

[Richard Gaskin]

Mark Schonewille wrote:

 > On 24 feb 2012, at 03:34, Kay C Lan wrote:
 >
 >> This bit in the latest Rev Newsletter about where Fields are headed
 >> looks extremely promising.
 >>
 >> 
http://www.runrev.com/newsletter/february/issue129/newsletter1.php?a=NWS129
 >>
 >> I'm mangling/butchering/faking/ignoring two or three similar
 >> features for quite a while now, so I look forward to a simpler
 >> and faster solution.
 >
 > No improvements with regard to RTL languages. No "unicode that just
 > works" :-(

There's always a way to turn progress into a downer. ;)

True, and there are many other requests in the RQCC that aren't 
completed in 5.5 as well.  I'd like to see all of them included, but I 
don't think it's realistic to expect them all in one release.

The 5.5 field revisions represent the single biggest leap forward for 
the field object we've seen yet.

In many ways, this new architecture paves the way for other 
enhancements, like RTL, Unicode, independent column alignment, and others.

But even if its 5.5 form may seem modest, it's really quite substantial 
in so many ways that will have a very positive impact on hundreds of 
projects.

Kay's mention of workarounds mirrors my own experience in many ways, 
esp. with the need to embed arbitrary metadata in text runs.  That alone 
would have me singing from the rooftops, but when we add paragraph-level 
formatting, independent style attributes, and the mind-bendingly 
flexible array access to field structures, this is a very exciting step 
forward for a great many developers.

With 5.5 it's now possible to make a decent word processor, and a few 
hundred other things besides....

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
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