Re: [Inkscape-devel] Joining GNOME Office

[Bryce Harrington <bryce osdl org>]

On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Charles Goodwin wrote:
> Inkscape developers!
>
> I'm in the process of developing the new GNOME Office portal.
>
> 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.

> I also notice your plans for a clip art extension.  This would also be
> an excellent tool for other GNOME Office applications.

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.

We haven't defined what that process will be precisely, but hope to keep
it straightforward and easy for folks to implement.  It could be as
simple as "create a symlink to your clipart package in
/usr/share/inkscape/clipart/".

> GO already contains arguably the best available spreadsheet application
> in Gnumeric, one of the leading word processors in AbiWord, and an
> excellent data(base)-agnostic backend in the Gnome-DB project that is a
> unique facet to GO.  We are looking to include Conglomerate (advanced
> XML editor), Mergeant (database management), and Planner (project
> management) as well as Inkscape.  The increased collaboration and code
> re-use could produce an office suite to be reckoned with.
>
> Inkscape is becoming the leading SVG editor.  I am in a position of
> ignorance (not a coder or a projcet lead) but I firmly believe there is
> a desire from the GO team to include Inkscape among GO or, at the very
> least, make use of some of the excellent functionality provided by
> Inkscape.

It's an honor to be considered joining with this.  We'd certainly like
to learn more about this.  And of course we'll need some time to discuss
this as a team before reaching a decision.  However a few questions
spring to mind:

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?

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

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?

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

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

> Perhaps Inkscape could make use of the advanced editing capabilities of
> Conglomerate or other facets of GO?  There is libgsf, libgda, libgnomedb
> and the planned libgoffice (emerging from Gnumeric).

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

> In the potential GO application list, we have a distinct selection of
> potentially (if not arguably) best-of-breed applications.  If they were
> to collaborate then who knows what exciting prospects the future might
> hold!  But first the respective project leads must be prepared to look
> months or even years ahead in terms of planning and setting goals.
>
> Thank you for your time and I hope to hear from you soon!
>

Thanks,
Bryce