Re: GNOME Office app options

[Daniel Veillard <Daniel Veillard w3 org>]

On Tue, Aug 29, 2000 at 08:31:48PM -0700, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> So we have three options here basically:
> 
> 1) Include some subset of the apps and ship them as part of GNOME 1.4
>    proper (i.e. what we've done in the past).
> 
> 2) Split the apps off into a "GNOME Office" release, possibly giving
>    it a scary version number.
> 
> 3) Keep each app on a separate release schedule. Don't release GNOME
>    Office as a whole until some other criterion is met (stability,
>    integration, completeness...).
> 
> I'd like it if folks who have a strong opinion would indicate which of
> these options they like best.
> 
> Personally, I think option 1 is the worst.

  Agreed, except maybe for PR (one big one is better than many smaller)
but let's view this from a technical standpoint.

> I don't think any of the
> criticisms folks have raised for option 2 apply any less to option 1
> (difficulty of synchronizing releases, instability, lack of
> integration), and it has the additional difficulty of making release
> coordination of all of GNOME more complex.

  I can see the point of having 2 to insure office applications
interoperability, which will become more and more important as the whole
suite matures.
  I also understand that the various apps are developped by different
teams and with different schedule for pragmatic reason "it it ain't
ready, don't ship it" (major lesson learnt in the past :-). So 3 really
makes sense too.

  But in the end I would expect that if the architecture is cleanly
implemented, application interoperability will be completely handled
by the Gnome core, and hence the reason for 2 tends to vanish. So I would
suggest 2 until all the core interoperability modules (bonobo and co...)
are completely stable and all provided by Core then 3 will make more sense.

Daniel

-- 
Daniel.Veillard@w3.org | W3C, INRIA Rhone-Alpes  | Today's Bookmarks :
Tel : +33 476 615 257  | 655, avenue de l'Europe | Linux XML libxml WWW
Fax : +33 476 615 207  | 38330 Montbonnot FRANCE | Gnome rpm2html rpmfind
 http://www.w3.org/People/all#veillard%40w3.org  | RPM badminton Kaffe