Re: Gnome Office summary from the Gnome Summit.

[Martin Sevior <msevior mccubbin ph unimelb edu au>]

On Thu, 2002-07-25 at 03:57, Martin Sevior wrote:
> _Gnome-db_
>
Rodrigo Moya wrote:
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fully ported to GNOME2 (all development has been for GNOME 2 for the
last months). Right now, the focus is on merging gASQL
(http://gasql.sourceforge.net) and the GNOME-DB front-end into one
single application, combining the end-user features of gASQL with the
administrator-oriented features of the GNOME-DB front-end, which will
result in something quite similar to MS Access, but with much much more
powerful features (generic DB access, some high-level features for DBAs,
etc).

The resulting app is called egnima, and is available on the gasql branch
of gnome-db CVS module.

Apart from that, more focus is being targeted to feature-complete libgda
(the low-level data access library, now without CORBA dependencies) and
libgnomedb (the widgets library), although both of them are more
targeted to developers, including GNOME Office apps' developers, which
can use them to easily add DB access to their apps, so that you can
insert data from a DB into them.
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Very Cool :-)

>
> All the Gnome Office applications are large programs. We all have lots
of
> work to do to make our own applications as good as they can be. However
> we also realize that each project gains from using features from other
> projects. We also all gain from a common look and feel from an
integrated
> look among our projects. So we want to find ways to integrate these
> projects to make them easily usable and develop synergy between them.
>
apart from the common look&feel, I'd suggest to do more work on the
plugin system I started in the gnome-office CVS module. Having all GO
apps use it would give us a lot of integration and cooperation between
them.


> Some suggestions for integration.
>
> * Have a gnome-office panel?shell? to launch these applications.
>
I don't like too much this idea, although I won't disagree too much if
most people agree on it. It's better, IMO, to have independent apps that
talk easily to each other than having a common shell.

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I guess I was thinking of a launch new document application where you can
choose a WP document, a spreadsheet a database ala MS Office.

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>
> * Some wizards to whip up useful applications from users.
>   (eg Form letters, envolope printing)
>
that is a very good idea, worth having it in a libgnomeofficeui library.

> * Extract data from Gnome-db/ addressbook/gnumeric/calendar to generate
>   letters.
>
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that should be very easily done if we come up with a plugin that does
this, so that all apps can just use it.

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Right!

>
> * Use AbiWord to generate reports form gnome-db
>
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again, having the data-access plugin should make this very easy.

-----------------------------------------------------------
>
> * Integration with Galeon/Nautilus - display Office (MS documents, OO,
>   WP, *) in the web browser/ Nautilus.
>
> * Integration with Nautilus - display contents of MS word/ Word
>   Perfect/SO/OO/HTML/(everything else) documents inside Icons as is
>   currently done with text docs. We could do this rather easily with
>   AbiWord and would be a genuinely new feature on the desktop.
>
both of these two can be easily made via BonoboControl+MIME type
database, so I guess for this we just need to add support to Galeon to
open all kinds of documents based on theiur mime types and installed
BonoboControl's, since Nautilus already supports it.
--------------------------------------------------------------

The Nautilus 1 needed some extra code. I did not have the patience to make
AbiWord a NAutilus view when I made the AbiWord Bonobo component. It all
worked for evolution because Evolution followed exactly the Bonobo
interface. Maybe it's easier with Nautilus 2. I haven't looked yet.

However what I meant on this second item was something different. Nautilus
currently displays the contents of text files in the text icons. I propose
to do the same for any type of Word Processing document AbiWord can read.

 > _Some Action Items._ >
> * Gnome-Office really needs someone to lead these integration issues and
>   try to herd cats into useful activities. This person would promote the
>   usefulness of working on Gnome Office applications (maybe particular
>   integration projects).
>
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I think Jody is the best person for leading this, although I suppose
he'll be very busy working on Gnumeric. As I told him, he can count on
my help for that.
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I think it might be better to get someone not inside any particular app
who can get an overall view of the project.

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>
> * Get interfaces to data items doing useful things (especially now
>   AbiWord has tables)
>
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the data-access plugin could offer all of that.
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Right!

> * Implement libgsf for Gnome Office apps.
>
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this should be a MUST for all GO apps. I mean, we should have all GO
apps understand libgsf formats, so that they can all read documents
generated by other GO apps.
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Dom just now committed libgsf support for AbiWord.

Cheers

Martin