Re: GUADEC Results

[Joe Shaw <joe ximian com>]

>   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 ]
>   - Galeon    [ web browsing ]

>   Of these, Gfax and Galeon equivalents are not usually included in
>   other office suites.  The major component we are missing is a
>   presentation program, which I will discuss later.  

If the target is after GNOME 2.0 (that is, apart of the 2.0 platform), I
would like to see Achtung in there. With GTK+ under a tentative API
freeze, I am going to start making the port of Achtung to 2.0 and the
surrounding tech.

>   - 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.  
>   - Share more code.
>   - Have a more similar look and feel.  For example, have icons on the
>   toolbars in the same order.  

This, to me, is the most important aspect of what an "office
suite" is. There's almost no point in calling it that if they don't work
together and share infrastructure. I'd like to propose that we use and
enhance bonobo-draw (in GNOME CVS) from Mike Kestner as the basis of the
drawing system. It is based upon the Achtung drawing stuff and the
OpenOffice UNO IDL; I'd like to see the advanced features of the stuff in
Sodipodi to be integrated as well.

>   - 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.  

Bonobo integration is key, IMO.

Joe