Re: BOB: GNOME Word Processor Efforts

[David Warnock <david sundayta co uk>]

Sam,

I hope you don't mind someone who knows even less than gnome butting in
with a comment.

To sumarise what I have read so far in this thread.

Several people are interested in writing a Gnome Word Processor
(possibly built on top of gwp or some other wp application). It has been
suggested to them that they might instead extend emacs. RMS suggests
that it is quite possible to do this to emacs. The suggestion to use
emacs has not been welcomed :-)

My thoughts on this are

1. Usable applications will arrive most quickly if the coders are doing
what they would like to do. Even if it is 10% of the work to get a wp by
method x you may well get a wp quicker by method y if the coders like y
more than x.

2. I fully believe that emacs could be extended to include wp features.
However I also believe that this is unlikely to be suitable for many new
gnome users. Gnome is a desktop designed to allow wider use of linux on
the desktop. Therefore many users of a Gnome WP will be new to linux. I
do not believe emacs well suited to that audience. However, wp
extentions to emacs would allow users who like emacs to do more work
within their preferred tool and would be a "good thing" for them.

3. A choice of wp options for gnome is not a bad thing. If there is a
single wp tool there will be temptations to bloat it so that it meets
all wp needs (in the process reducing reliability and ease of use). It
is possible to have several different wp's which focus on various
specialised (for example general office, legal, scientific, book
writing).

Regards

Dave