Re: Announcement: starting to write a RTF viewer

[Mark Galassi <rosalia cygnus com>]

    Christopher> Is there anyone who has begun doing something like
    Christopher> this or has it already been done?

My understanding used to be that the only rtf viewer you could use was 
the Applixware word processor, which is not free.

But since then a company that had written the Maxwell word processor
has relesaed it under the GPL.  I think that Maxwell has an RTF
reader.

The URL for Maxwell is http://www.eeyore-mule.demon.co.uk/ and you can 
get source there.

    Christopher> I was also thinking of writing it as a ggv module or
    Christopher> plug-in or something similar, do you think it's
    Christopher> possible?

I think it would be ideal if what you did plugged in to ggv (that's an
excellent idea), and also if the RTF parsing library that you write
can be used by gwp and gEdit and other programs.

    Christopher> The most important question is: does Gnome really
    Christopher> need a RTF viewer?  :)

Well, since I suggested the idea to you, I'll advocate that!

There are two reasons for which I think an RTF viewer is important for 
free software:

1. My agenda (smile) is to get people to use DocBook, and the easiest
   backend for jade is still the RTF one.  If we had a free RTF
   viewer people would be much happier to use docbook+jade.

2. I frequently say that the motto of GNOME is "let's see if we can
   give mom and dad a linux box and get them to use it".  But people
   will need to run applications compatible with what their coworkers
   have, so interchange with Microsoft Office is important.  Miguel's
   hard work on gnumeric is a fundamental part of that, and making
   free UNIX word processors gork RTF (and eventually word's native
   format) is also essential.