Re: [Inkscape-devel] Joining GNOME Office

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 10:33:54AM -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> 
> 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?

At present there are two libraries associated with gnome-office, and
one more is on the way.

    - gnome-db/gda : glib, libxml2, libxslt
    - libgsf : glib, libxml2, bzip2, zlib

All of these are available on all relevant platforms.  The new
libgoffice that is under development currently pulls gtk and
libgnomeprint into the stack.  libgnomeprint is purely glib, and
should not be a problem, although it could use some platform specific
printing backends.  gtk will likely cause some consternation
depending on your cross platform strategy.
 
> Do you have a listing of the currently available reusable components
> from these other projects, that we could review?

At present gnome-db and libgsf are the only stand alone portions.
libgoffice was developed as an appendage to gnumeric, and will bud
off into a stand alone library after it has absorbed a bit more from
it's parent.

> 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?

There are no relevant freedesktop initiatives directly relating to
office applications as far as I know.  If some are created we'll be
involved.  We are monitoring the OASIS file format effort, and
have joined the FSG printing initiatives.

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

Eventually there may be.  At the inception our goals are focused on
creation, than long term visions.  For now it is sufficient to be
a well maintained application that uses glib, and would like to be
part of the gnome-office project.  We need to work on integration at
many levels.  Let's pick the easy bits, such as cut-n-paste, first.

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

There is only one competitor of interest, Microsoft.

OO and KO are both interesting projects that we should collaborate
with when possible.  Gnumeric has exchanged test suites with OO, and
KO uses libgsf and libwv.  We'll continue to improve support for the
OOo implementation of the OASIS file formats.  It may even make
sense to adopt their structured file format.  Of course it is
difficult to have much interaction with OO, its quite difficult for
them to break their code into pieces others can use.