Re: GUADEC Results

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

Hi all!

On 10 Apr 2001 01:20:30 -0500, Sam TH wrote:
> Executive Summary:  
> 
> GUADEC was fun.  GNOME Office is now real.  It would be nice to
> release a whole suite for GNOME 2.0.  This will be lots of work.  So
> start.  :-)
> 
> Much longer version:
> 
> GUADEC 2, masterfully orcestrated by our Scandanvian compatriots, was
> a huge success for GNOME overall, and for GNOME Office in particular.
> First, lots of people were able to meet face to face for the first
> time, and lots of GNOME office developers were able to attend,
> including developers from AbiWord, Gnumeric, Guppi and Dia.  
> 

also from gnome-db :-)

> - Composition
> 
>   What is in GNOME Office?
> 
>   The following applications are clearly within the domain of an
>   office suite as the market is currently defined (by Microsoft and
>   its customers) and have expressed the desire to be part of GNOME
>   Office:
> 
>   - Gnumeric [ spreadsheet ]
>   - AbiWord  [ word processor ]
>   - Guppi    [ charting and graphing ]
>   - Dia      [ diagramming ] 
> 
>   GnuCash, I am told, has expressed the active desire _not_ to be
>   considered part of GNOME Office.  
> 
>   Other potential candidates for inclusion are [2] :
> 
>   - Sodipodi  [ vector drawing ]
>   - Evolution [ mail client ]
>   - EOG             [ image viewing ]
>   - Toutdoux  [ project management ]
>   - Gimp      [ drawing ]
>   - Gfax      [ faxing ]
>   - GNOME-DB  [ database connectivity ]

yes, definitely, the gnome-db developers want gnome-db to be part of
GNOME Office, and we'll be doing all we can to make gnome-db integrate
perfectly in GNOME Office.

> - Goals
> 
>   We came out of GUADEC with a number of goals, some quite vague, and
>   some quite specific.  Here are a few:
> 
>   - Release GNOME Office 1.0 with GNOME 2.0.  This means by Dec 31,
>   2001.  
>   - Integrate with the other GNOME Office applications better.  This
>   means using technologies like Bonobo

yes, as I've already suggested some time ago, it would be a very good
thing to start defining some sort of custom IDL to be implemented by GO
apps. I prepared some time ago a starting point for this, so, if you
want, I can update it and post it so that we can start discussing about
it

.  
>   - Share more code.

yes, IMO we should start by doing a libgnomeoffice module, and have
there all the code to be shared. I think it 's best to have a separated
libgnomeoffice rather than putting the shared code in GAL (or EEL) as it
was suggested in the BOF. Things that later can be moved to GAL or
gnome-libs or GTK could be moved, but it makes a lot of sense to have a
libgnomeoffice (as koffice-libs)

>   Here's the current status of the 4 apps I mentioned at the

>   beginning.
> 
>   - AbiWord
>   
>   AbiWord is maturing rapidly, and will soon be heading into feature
>   freeze for version 1.0.  There is high probability that 1.0 will be
>   released before GNOME 1.0 would be released.  However, AbiWord 1.0
>   is likely not to be based on the GNOME 2 platform, neccessitating
>   further work for integration before GNOME Office 1.0
> 
>   - Gnumeric
> 
>   The Gnumeric maintainer, Jody Goldberg, has committed to releasing
>   verison 1.0, with Bonobo support, before the end of the year.
> 
>   - Guppi
> 
>  Guppi already supports being embedded as a Bonobo control. It is at
>   version 0.35.3. Further status unknown by me.  Jon?
> 
>   - Dia
> 
>   Dia is at version 0.86.  Further status unknown.  
> 
>   For release plans, it would be nice to know in the resonanably near
>   future the answer to the question "What is in GNOME Office?".
>   However, this may not be possible.  
> 

I'll add the status for gnome-db:
the basic framework (that is, the data access part) is quite mature and
stable. What it's missing is a good user interface. Right now, I am
working on rewriting some UI parts, so it would be great if I could take
advantage of this to integrate it in GO at the same time.
gnome-db already uses Bonobo.
we're also working on adding a report engine, which makes a lot of sense
for being used by office apps

> - Interoperation
> 
>   There are two major components to interoperation which will be
>   dicussed here.
> 
>   - Bonobo
>   
>   Bonobo is the the component technology used by the GNOME platform.
>   Currently, the only GNOME Office applications that take advantage of
>   Bonobo are Guppi and Gnumeric, allowing Guppi charts and graphs to
>   be embedded in Gnumeric spreadsheets.  AbiWord plans to develop
>   support for both embedding Bonobo objects and being used as such an
>   object in the hopefully near future.  
> 

sorry for saying it again, but gnome-db also supports Bonobo. In fact,
it is 100% bonobo-based, since all the different UI parts are components
(as Evolution)

cheers

-- 
Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org> <rodrigo ximian com>
http://www.gnome-db.org/