Re: next GO release

[msevior physics unimelb edu au]

> On Sat, 2003-11-22 at 00:10, msevior physics unimelb edu au wrote:
>>
>> If we can keep to a 6-month time-based releases we can release updated
>> versions of Gnome-Office in synch with the Gnome-desktop releases
>> anyway.
>>
>> BTW I think there is still every chance AbiWord will have a decent 2.2
>> release in about 4 months time. How are other apps tracking?
>>
> libgda and libgnomedb will have a 1.2 release at that time, with cool
> features like updatable data models (ie, no more SQL needed). Mergeant
> might be ready, but if it continues at the same pace it is now, I doubt
> it'll be ready :-(
>
> We should, apart from preparing the apps' releases, prepare a plan for
> the next GO release. So, some questions we should answer:
>
> * what happened to the plugin system we were talking about? Are app
> maintainers willing to move to that shared plugin system?

*I* think it's a good idea. Unfortunately no one in the AbiWord community
has volenteered to take it on.

> * what other integration issues should we work on?

Depending on how my next major challenge works out, (an Equation Editor)
I'd like to see some sort of embedding framework worked out. Either bonobo
or something else - (SVG maybe?)

I'd also love to see proper native support for SVG (rendering on-screen
and printing) in time for the next release. It's getting pretty tight at
this point given the amount of work that's needed.

I'd love to see more integration with Evolution. I'd like us to have full
access to the addresbook and calendar. I'd also like evo to display
attachment's in-line with AbiWord and Gnumeric again. I haven't had a
chance to follow up on why attachments no are longer viewable inline using
the AbiWord and Gnumeric bonobo components.

We have got to get proper copy and paste between Gnumeric and AbiWord
happenning. ie
Select cells in gnumeric press copy, click paste in abiword and a nice
table with the cells properly formatted appears (and vice versa). I think
this is mostly AbiWord's issue but our (X)HTML importer only needs a
little more work until it's capable of importing Gnumeric's XHTML.

> * Jody seems to be moving the graph engine to libgoffice, so that's
> another shared thing that can somewhat be called integration, but, what
> other things could be shared?
>

AbiWord will move towards full exploitation of libgsf. At some stage we
will take advantage of the Gnumeric shading code. We have the backend to
now write text over images but there doesn't seem to be much interest in
this functionality from our users so it prolly won't happen before 2.2.

> I think we should probably start having a detailed plan for each of the
> 6-months time-based releases.
>

Yes. Although just sticking to a plan in the AbiWord project is a bit
difficult. Interesting ideas crop up and sometimes horrible bugs you don't
expect require urgent attention plus of course I never know how much time
our hackers will actually have. I am often surprised (pleasantly and
otherwise :-) about who contributes how much.

I sometimes think it would be fun to hack together a PrintMaster clone
with python and using the AbiWord bonobo embeddable component but there is
always something else I have to do...

Cheers

Martin