Interesting idea What you seem to be describing is a way of having spreadsheet data, sort of auto filed into a report of a kind. So that a person can insert values of the spreadsheet into the document as they would insert fields such as page number, or author.
In this aspect there can be several advantages over the 'solution' provided beforehand of inserting the spreadsheet object. As a user can manipulate and format the values as they would any other element in the document. I have to say that the field handling in writer is sorely dissapointing. For some reason it's impossible to edit author and template information. Or for that matter add your own custom fields (or if there is it's been too difficult to find so far) anyway. 2 questions: 1: is what you actually have in mind like what I suggest, where the spreadsheet can be linked to a document thus allowing a database of fields relationship sort of thing. 2: Wouldn't it make more sense to think of the spreadsheet-document relation as applied to a template system. Where predefined fields are filled into a template every time a 'print by template' request is filed. There already is a way of getting fields to be filled in from a database, but that naturally doesn't have all the same possibilities of a linked spreadsheet. Also 3 assertions: 1: You appear to be describing several related innovations, seperate nonetheless. For example, a new interface concept in presenting this relationship to the user, and organising a set of documents with a spreadsheet. Wow hold on there, i've addressed what I think as the most valuable, namely linking documents/templates to spreadsheets to automatically create reports. But you may want to rethink your ideas which you clearly are quite enthusiastic about, so as to seperate them into more clearly defined concepts, so that people can more easily understand them 2: this could be quite a bit of implementation, especially in the full glory you describe (again why you really should spit up your grand plan a bit) so don't expect it to happen overnight, main first innovation will be to get the writer to be able to import spreadsheets as linkable field arrays. Then improving the method and means after that. 3: There's more to the grand ever connected office idea than just spreadsheets and documents, but there's already enough to digest here so i'll leave that for now ;-) --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
