Re: GNOME Office app options

[Joe Shaw <joe helixcode com>]

In the not-too-distant future, I would like to see #2 (GNOME Office
release). However, I think the authors of the GNOME Office apps need to do
a far better job of communicating, reusing code, and organizing before I
would really feel comfortable doing this. At OLS the Achtung guys (myself,
Phil Schwan, and Mike Kestner) got together with Jody and Michael Meeks
and talked about some of these issues. If we really want to group these
into an office suite, I think we need to do a better job of integrating
them. And I'm not talking about bonobo components here, necessarily. We
should reuse the same widgets, we should share drawing code (gnumeric,
dia, achtung, and sodipodi all have their own drawing code, for example),
have a consistent menu layout. And of course, bonobo component sharing and
integration would be nice too.

Since none of that has been done yet, I would prefer we go with #3. I've
been sort of charged recently with the desire to get hacking on Achtung
again after a month-and-a-half hiatus, and I'm willing to take on the
responsibility to setting up the office list and an office-hackers list if
it hasn't been done already and people want to do that (of course, it'll
be at helixcode.com, but I don't think that'll be a problem with
anybody...), but it's really important that we get everyone on the same
page: gnumeric, abiword, gnucash, guppi, sodipodi, dia, gnome-db, achtung,
and others that I've missed. The OpenOffice people should also definitely
be involved.

Now that the infrastructure is finally coming around, it's time to get
these next generation applications out there. Evolution and Nautilus are
just the first step, as far as I'm concerned.

Joe