Re: [Inkscape-devel] Joining GNOME Office

[Charles Goodwin <charlie xwt org>]

I'll respond as best I can, although I'm hoping that somebody with a
more development acumen wrt GO will pipe up to officially clarify
things.  I should be right(ish) though.

On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 18:33, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> > There's has been talk of GNOME Office applications requiring a quality
> > SVG canvas.  Your roadmap suggests that, at some point, you intend to
> > separate out an SVG canvas from the Inkscape codebase.
> 
> Yes, this is something we think many other projects would derive value
> from.  There's several major refactoring steps that need to be done
> before we can feasibly approach it, so this may be rather 'blue sky' for
> a good while.

It's not 'blue sky' though; it needs to be outlined early just how this
will eventually happen so that when it becomes a viable tool then the GO
applications will be in a position to take advantage of it.

> Agreed.  Note though that while we hope to encourage and assist in
> generation and collection of clipart, our specific objective is simply
> to define a way to "plug in" clipart to Inkscape.  In this way, other
> projects besides us could organize and generate their own clipart
> packages, without having to go through the Inkscape project.

I believe it's the "plug in" bit that would be of interest to GO
applications.  Jody is already working hard with the Gnumeric codebase
to factor out libgoffice which will provide, among other things, a
common plugin framework for GO applications.  If the clipart plugin were
to be a potential goffice plugin... this is how the benefits of
collaboration would start to be realised.

Things like the clipart media come with time; I don't believe this will
be a concern to anybody at the moment.  What use is clipart if we can
not yet use it? ;)

> First, we have historically striven to avoid adding dependencies that
> are not common on a wide range of platforms.  Of course, this means that
> we often cannot make use of the latest and greatest enhancements
> available, but on the other hand it makes life much easier for our
> users.  What is the GNOME Office's stance on the issues of dependencies
> and portability?

Dependencies will be limited to goffice libraries like libgda and
libgoffice, which afaik are developed with portability in mind.

AbiWord is already well-ported to Windows, MacOS, QNX, and even BeOS.

Gnumeric will become portable in it's next version; I recently read an
update from Jody where he outlined the last remaining GNOME-specific
dependencies.

I'm not sure of the Gnome-DB portability status.

Summary: GO is aiming to be fully portable.

> Do you have a listing of the currently available reusable components
> from these other projects, that we could review?

libgda, libgnomedb: www.gnome-db.org
libgsf: http://www.advogato.org/proj/libgsf/
libgoffice: currently part of Gnumeric afaik

The best guys to liase with on this are Jody Goldberg and Rodrigo Moya.

> Third, is GNOME Office working with the freedesktop organization?  How
> is it tying in with them?  Are there other standards bodies that GO will
> be working with?

Afaik there is non-strict adherence to the HIG.  I am unaware of any
major collaboration with fd.o, although I'm uncertain whether fd.o is
covering anything pertinent to GO at the moment.

Obviously with Cairo, fd.o is probably more relevant to Inkscape.

However, that's only what I know (which is limited) and I'm sure any of
the GO projects would be eager to work with fd.o if it were to be of
any benefit to them.

> Will there be a set of standards or guidelines that all GO apps will
> strive to follow?

Is there?  Not yet.  Will there be?  I would have thought so.

I'm just beginning to stir up a fuss; GO has been slumbering for far too
long and it's time to galvanise the effort.  Only recently have the core
GO projects (AbiWord, Gnumeric and Gnome-DB) aligned development goals.

I'm hoping that the lead developers will start to put their heads
together on issues like this to form an official roadmap and guidelines
for the GO applications to aspire to.  Your input on this could be
crucial given your projects potential importance through providing the
graphical canvas.

> Finally, how do you view Open Office and KOffice in the context of GNOME
> Office, and in terms of interoperability, competition, augmentation,
> etc.?

This is my 'birds eye view' take:-

Interoperability: I believe it is a definite goal to support the various
OASIS office formats.  I think Gnumeric is closest to this goal, as
nobody has stepped up to really work on it for AbiWord.  It's more a
question of manpower whilst the lead developers are concentrating on
more important aspects.

Competition: I believe the goal of every GO application is to be the
best of it's breed.  Cloning is not on the agenda.

Augmentation: This is a tricky one to answer.  With no formal process or
documentation in place, this is something that really needs to be
defined.  The GNOME Office 1.0 release was achieved by years of quiet
dedicated hard work by the AbiWord, Gnumeric, and Gnome-DB teams.  It
was a case of actions speaking louder than words.

I believe that GO is not looking to envelope applications like Inkscape
or Conglomerate.  Instead, I think GO is looking for input on
collaborating to the distinct advantage of the current and prospective
member projects.

For GO to make good progress towards a greater goal over the coming
years, greater efforts do need to be made to define process to allow the
collaborating GO applications and projects to grow closer together.

Rodrigo told me he to go step by step, and I agree this is the best way
to make progress.  It is now a case of gathering the projects of
potential for GO together to start moving step by step towards a common
path, towards a greater goal.

> We have been looking at libgsf.  It would be interesting to learn more
> about the benefits these other capabilities could provide for Inkscape.

Jody would be best placed to answer this.

> Thanks,
> Bryce

Thank you for your time and consideration.
-- 
- Charlie

The future of the net - www.xwt.org

Charles Goodwin <charlie xwt org>
  Member of the XWT Foundation