Re: GUADEC Results

[Mike Kestner <mkestner ameritech net>]

Sam TH wrote:

Thanks for the summary.  As I sat at home observing every mailing list
slow to a trickle, it was clear I was missing a ton of discussion.

>   The major component we are missing is a
>   presentation program, which I will discuss later.

Since you didn't discuss it later, is this a topic for another mail? 
Clearly, Achtung is the most likely candidate to fill this spot.  Yes,
Achtung is vaporware, but it is probably one of the most advanced pieces
of vaporware around.  :-)  

It has a substantial investment in bonobo, which only needs to be
brought up to speed with the new UI handler (I have already done much of
this UI work, but it isn't checked in yet).  Back prior to the UI
handler reengineering, I was able to embed Achtung slides, in-place
activate them, and edit them within gnumeric and the sample container in
bonobo.

Achtung was only lacking a good text canvas item to be usable a year
ago.  Since then, the app itself has stagnated waiting for the GNOME 2.0
platform and pango for text rendering. I have, however, made significant
strides toward abstracting its drawing code into the bonobo-draw
component library in order to facilitate some of your other points like
reuse and more bonobo integration.

bonobo-draw was born out of conversations between the achtung and
gnumeric folks at OLS last year.  I am quite interested in seeing it
provide to GnomeOffice the type of drawing layer functionality that
MSDraw provides. 

> - Interoperation
> 
>   There are two major components to interoperation which will be
>   dicussed here.

I would add a third, the GnomeCanvas.  Gnumeric and Achtung already use
it.  By implementing the rendering via CanvasItems, we will make it not
only easier to share compound documents within the Office Apps, but it
will be easier to integrate with other canvas apps, like evolution. 
Creating a library of useful canvas items should also facilitate reuse.

That said, the canvas needs some love.  Bonobo canvas items are a bit
temperamental at the moment.  I have worked some of the kinks out in the
course of bonobo-draw work, but it needs more eyeballs.  I think an
investment of some time in the bonobo AA canvas would yield a powerful
rendering engine for the office suite.
    
Mike