Provide documentation for how to add a new column type

[atmgrifter00]

🧹 Tech Debt

As we should expect there to be a desire on the client-side to create new column types that Nimble doesn't support out-of-the-box, we should provide sufficient documentation to help a developer accomplish this. While the Table Column spec does provide detail for how a client could go about creating a new column type, it likely isn't the most succinct, digestible way we could provide that information.

[m-akinc]

We should include guidance that they add logic to conditionally set a title for cells where the content is truncated/ellipsized. Because it's not immediately obvious how to do that, they can use the text column's cell template as an example.

Should also direct them to add a toolitp to their column header content, if it is something other than plain text. (We will automatically set a header tooltip for plain text.)

[jattasNI]

This documentation should include guidance about configuring column widths as added in #1098. Specifically it should list the available mixins and describe how to apply a mixin to a new column type.

[epetersoni]

I tried prototyping a column where each cell would display a select element and haven't gotten very far. Documentation would definitely help, but a lack of TypeScript knowledge has also been a challenge.

I don't think it's worth my time to continue that attempt right now. I would like to get an idea of how much effort it would be to create Nimble custom columns vs other approaches.

Note that it's unclear if and where we might need custom columns right now. I've seen a variety of UX explorations, some of which use a table view and some of which have pretty different approaches. The goal of these questions is to give us some rough estimates we can use as an input during the UX design process.

Some questions / concerns about creating Nimble custom column types:

• Would they belong in the Nimble repo or in our own codebase? (I'd assume this depends on how likely we think others are to reuse it)
• If it's in our codebase and we're using Blazor, we'd need to
  • Add the ability to build TypeScript code
  • Learn how to use Jasmine and build and run tests
  • Update our pipeline to build TypeScript code and run the Jasmine tests

Right now the most likely alternative is the Radzen table, where the DataGrid control has column templates that are easy to use in Blazor. This has a different set of concerns:

• How much work do we expect to get the styling / look / feel / accessibility / responsiveness, etc. that we'd get from Nimble
• One reason for choosing Radzen is that the BTS UI is already using their DataGrid and Dropdown alongside Nimble controls. Can we leverage any styling they are doing?

With both approaches the cost of adding a second custom column type would be significantly lower:

• With Nimble, we'd already have the TypeScript build / tests set up, and would have gained some TypeScript knowledge
• With Radzen, we'd already have Nimble-ified the DataGrid

Does anyone have a rough feel for which approach might be less work?

[jattasNI]

We met offline to discuss this. Our proposal is that apps could define "incubating" components like table columns within the Nimble repo to take advantage of its build and publishing infrastructure. They'd be marked to make it clear to clients that they're unofficial. See #1249 for more discussion.