Re: GUADEC Results

[Joe Shaw <joe ximian com>]

> 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.

Speaking of the text canvas item, I spent a good, long time on the plane
back from Denmark reading and making notes about the new GtkTextView
infrastructure and it seems to be exceptionally well split between model
and view. Havoc, if you're on this list, you should be
commended. :) Anyway, there is definitely a good amount of work to be done
on that bad boy for the canvas, but I think that it should be fairly
straightforward. Zooming will be tricky, I think.

> 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.

Yeah. The canvas needs to be fixed for 2.0. The Dia guys have written
their own, the Evolution guys have created ECanvas, which derives from
GnomeCanvas, and I think Lauris has done some evil things to/for the
canvas in Sodipodi (I admit I am rather ignorant as far as that goes,
though).

Joe