Re: How do we want the different parts to integrate (Was Re: What goes in gnome office? (Lets keep it simple))

[Rodrigo Moya <rodrigo gnome-db org>]

On Thu, 2002-04-18 at 06:12, Martin Sevior wrote:
> 
> I've played with a bit and I must say that it's performance is excellent.
> It handles expose events, scrolling, typing editting as fast as native
> abiword within my limited testing on my fast laptop. I must say that
> bonobo appears to be a fast component system. Creating new abiword
> controls from an already running instance of abiword is almost instaneous.
> (There is no measuable delay between pressing return and seeing a new
> test-container with an abiword doc in it). I haven't done anything like
> enough stress testing to see if the race conditions that have plauged
> other bonobo based apps will show here.
> 
cool news!

> 
> 
> This code sits on my laptop awaiting the abiword 1.0 release (which
> should be Real Soon Now). It should be usable immediately for both
> evolution and nautilus to allow emdedded or inline views of various Word
> Processing formats.
> 
> It's extremely easy to use and communicate with via bonobo_args.
> I now have to learn a bit about IDL and Gnome name spacing rules to make
> up a correct IDL file.
> 
yeah, another reason for using Bonobo/CORBA for the glue for GNOME
Office apps.

> I'm very happy that people would like to use abiword in their applications
> and I would like to help them make that possible.
> 
> I haven't yet investigated what it would take to make abiword documents
> truely embeddable in other apps no to make abiword accept embeddable apps
> (apart from thinking about document format issues.)
> 
> > Gnumeric: 
> > ---------
> > 
> > We'd like to be able to use the math engine in Gnumeric for stuff in
> > MrProject. I think you can find a lot of good uses for this.
> > 
> > Be able to use data from Gnumeric in MrProject and the other way around.
> > So that you for example have your resources in MrProject and get them
> > displayed in cells in Evolution.
> > 
> > I think you can find lots of good ways to interact between MrProject and
> > Gnumeric.
> > 
> 
> 
> I would really like to use either Gnumeric/GDA as a data source for
> envolope printing and mail merge within abiword. My wife's microbusiness
> could use this almost immediately. 
> 
as we already talked, Martin, having a GDA plugin for AbiWord is very
easy. But I'd prefer, as I said, to have some sort of generic glue, so
that that same plugin can be used for Gnumeric, GDA, etc.

When this is not possible, we should be doing specific plugins, but
having a way of getting data from any GO app without even knowing which
app it is is the correct thing to do, IMO.

> 
> One very important application that I would love to get working is
> GtkMathView for the creation and display of maths formulae. Luca is now
> making substantial progress on this.
> 
yeah, seems to be advancing a lot.

> Can someone present a high level view on how we should define a common
> set of communication protocols to allow data sharing? Do the OAF IDL files
> already provide the information we need?
> 
Bonobo does, not OAF. That's why IMO Bonobo is the best glue we can use,
since we've got a lot of code already ready to serve as the IPC
mechanism for different things. And when it misses something, it's just
a matter of defining our own interfaces, and have, in libgnomeoffice, a
GtkObject that wraps all IDL stuff.

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