Re: GNOME Office integration - recommended practices

[Martin Sevior <msevior physics unimelb edu au>]

On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 13:40 +0100, Robert Staudinger wrote:
> Hello, 
> 
> i'm hacking on a small app, and would be very happy if you could give me
> some advice how to achieve good gnome (and gnome-office) integration.
> I'm trying to ask very general questions.
> 
> (1) Is it recommended for new apps to use an existing file-format as
> their own native format?
> If, for example, an application mainly deals with tables, should
> the .gnumeric format be used? Should a diagramming app use .dia?
> The problem is that while importing and exporting my own files wouldn't
> cause a problem, my app of course could not read all files from the
> original app - this would most likely cause confusion.
> 
> A possible solution could be to re-use the existing format, but give it
> another filename extension. Then the original app could easily be
> patched to recognize an additional filename-extension.
> 
> (2) What is the predominant clipboard format for gnome-office interop?
> 

HI Robert,
          If your app based on tables use the gnumeric format as you
say. Then you'd better make sure the gnumeric format is rich enough to
support all the functionality you have.

Once you're satidfied it does make you your import/export functions are
gaurenteed to create valid gnumeric data.

I don't know what your app does. Presumabally it generates numeric data
in tables. If it does exporting to gnumeric format gives you a whole
extra dimension of usefulness - plus you solve the difficult problem of
printing your sheet. Just use gnumeric instead.

I did this with Divifund. Saved me tons of horrible hacking :-)

2) Use XHTML for interop with both Gnumeric and AbiWord.

Cheers

Martin

> Thanks, 
> Rob
> 
> 
> 
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