Re: Opinions and experiences with ReportBro

On Wed, Jul 7, 2021 at 11:11 AM Nathan Andelin <nandelin@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Regarding the idea of preserving template capabilities that users currently
have, is there really a requirement that users provide inline code in the
report template (i.e. inline conditional expressions) paired with a
server-based engine that handles such expressions later, at runtime?

Short answer: Yes.

What
if users were to simply put placeholders for fields in HTML templates and
provide a separate note to a programmer, delineating conditional
expressions? That wouldn't take capabilities from users. Or am I missing
something?

You are missing something quite big. Your proposal is vastly less
efficient than what Marco has now.

If the user has to "provide a separate note" to indicate conditionals,
then your proposal does not save the user any work whatsoever. A
separate note is simply a free-form, not-syntax-checked version of the
"code" they are *already writing* now.

On the other hand, your proposal DOES create a F*CK-ton of extra work
for the programmer, and drastically increases the turnaround time
(i.e. wait time) experienced by the user. Your proposal thus
drastically reduces the productivity of both the user and the
programmer.

Just imagine how slow it is if the result gets back to the user and
the user notices that there was a mistake. Maybe the programmer
misread the note. Maybe the user changed their mind. In any event, the
user has to write another note to the programmer and wait for the
programmer to fix the program. Iterative refinement of a complex
document would be almost inconceivably slow.

You have proposed a mechanical Turk solution for something that can be
done entirely by computer.

John Y.