Gnome Office.

[Jamin Philip Gray <jgray writeme com>]

I think everyone is getting a bit uptight about the whole "What is
Gnome Office?" question a bit prematurely.  Right now the situation is
pretty simple, in a way.  We (The Gnome Project) have several office
components that have been in development for varying degrees of time.
I may miss one or two, but off the top of my head they are:

AbiWord (word processor)
Gnumeric (spreadsheet)
Dia (diagrams)
The Gimp (image editor)
Eye of Gnome (image viewer)
gnome-db (database frontend)
evolution (mail, news, calendar, addressbook, groupware, etc.)
guppi (data analysis, charts, plots)
achtung (presentations)
toutdoux (project management)
sodipodi (vector based drawing)

Okay, so some of these might still be in heavy development and not
ready for consumption by the masses, but I purposefully was a bit
futuristic in my list.  Also I'm not saying these are "officially
endorsed" in any way.  This is just a list of some apps that fill the
role of office productivity. 

We also have the Open Office codebase, which is much more mature, but
was not designed from the ground up with the Gnome architecture in
mind.  To be realistic, it would be a HUGE undertaking to change the
Open Office over to the Gnome technologies like GTk+, etc. Not to say
it can't be done.  

What I'm proposing is that the apps mentioned above, which have in the
past been considered Gnome Office, continue to be considered Gnome
Office.  Devleopment should continue.  And there should be a group
devoted to overseeing development as a whole, so we have a more
integrated office suite rather than just a set of independant
applications which might or might not work well together.  Bonobo, of
course, will provide the glue, but work should be done to make sure
the apps work well together and are somewhat consistent in terms of
look/feel.  As co-coordinator (along with Ian Peters) of the Gnome 1.4
extra-apps release I'd love to be a part of releasing something with
Gnome 1.4 that is labeled Gnome Office.  Most of the apps I listed
above will be part of the extra-apps release.  

As development continues I'd love to see more cooperation and code
sharing between Gnome Office and Open Office, and even KOffice, for
that matter.  And who knows what the future will hold?  At some point
Open Office might be recognized as a fully Gnomeified Suite and take the
place of the collection of apps above as the premiere office suite of
The Gnome Project.  In the meantime, folks, keep hacking, keep sharing
ideas and code, try to let your pride go a bit.  Keep the end goal of
developing the best office suite in the world in sight.  I truly
believe that in time the details of how it plays out will be worked
out.  

----------------------------------------------------
name:    Jamin Philip Gray
email:   jgray writeme com
icq:     1361499
jabber:  jamin jabber com
web:     http://DoLinux.org/jamin/

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

--Bob Dylan