Re: [Inkscape-devel] Joining GNOME Office

[Charles Goodwin <charlie xwt org>]

On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 06:37, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> Particularly, it would be of use to have some clearer explanation of the
> specific and tangible benefits of being part of a suite, as opposed to
> simply using similar underlying libraries and following similar
> guidelines.

The guidelines are still fairly basic:
- being gtk2-based
- half-adherence to the HIG
- being a good, solid application

Inkscape already fulfills this criteria.

The benefits start mainly with the use of common libraries:
- libgsf which you are already looking at
- libgoffice for plugins

These are things that would definitely benefit Inkscape (why reinvent
the wheel etc etc) in the short term.

Then longer term goals:
- exporting your SVG canvas to a library
- combining facets of Inkscape/Inkview with that of AbiWord to create a
  presentation application (somebody is already working on a framework)
- continual review of shared libraries and ongoing documentation efforts
- extra cross-platform compatability review and resources
- shared translation resources

Then there are the non-development-related benefits:
- extra publicity as being part of a suite
- larger community that can be a valuable resource
- shared resources to help cope with any sf.net inadequacies

The people to pay attention to in order to really get a feel for how
some of the above is achievable are Dom, Jody, and Rodrigo.  Dom's
excellent mail on libgsf show's just how well-thought-out libgsf is.

> One area I hope Gnome Office establishes a solid, well researched
> strategy is with Open Office (and perhaps also with KOffice).
> Despite the various things people dislike about OOo, it has a definite
> lead in many areas, which means that there is non-trivial risk to
> projects that seek to compete head-to-head with it.

KOffice are looking to use Enchant, which was born out of AbiWord.

I think it's a case of 'if we can work with them we will and if they can
work with us then encourage it.'  Not being a developer, I cannot assess
with an certainty the pheasibility of any aspect of this.

> Taking off my Inkscape hat and putting on my OSDL hat, a piece of advice
> I can share - From what I've been seeing and hearing in relation to
> OSDL's Desktop Initiative efforts, 2004 is likely going to see some
> strong pressures towards consolodation at the desktop level.  It sounds
> like Freedesktop is going to play a key role in this, which is why I'd
> strongly suggest building a very good relationship with them.

Dom answered this well already:

"I have at least 2 pertinent FD.O projects at the moment:

1) Use of Enchant (or some library that wraps Enchant, such as
GnomeSpell or GtkSpell) for any application that does spell-checking
2) Use of mime-type based atoms on the clipboard. For example, 
"image/svg+xml" and "image/png" might make sense for Inkscape.
"text/html" makes sense for Abi, Evo, Gnumeric, ..."

I encourage you to respond to emails from Dom, Jody, and Rodrigo before
you respond to mine.  Mine contain more hope than substance. ;)

I believe it would be easier for GNOME Office to establish ways in which
it could benefit from working with fd.o (and the other open source
offices) once GO has consolidated itself as a chosen suite of
applications and set out it's goals as a platform; it's difficult to
ascertain where we can work with these bodies on a broad level when
we're not yet fully certain of the direction we are GOing in.
-- 
- Charlie

The future of the net - www.xwt.org

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