Re: [Inkscape-devel] Joining GNOME Office

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 10:37:18PM -0800, 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.

I see benefits on several levels.

1) Mind share.  Like it or not people have been conditioned to
   believe that office/document apps are part of a suite.  An
   informal literature search at the local bookstore a few years ago
   turned up 10 references to Star-Office (before OO) 8 references to
   KOffice, 5 to abi and 2 to gnumeric.  The authors just didn't
   consider stand alone apps worth mentioning.

2) Shared code.  Many tasks associated with document centric
   applications are common across applications boundaries.
   - Managing plugins
   - Handling multiple import/export types
   - Simple widgets like undo/redo and colour selectors
   - reading/writing various file formats
   ...

   None of there are inherently impossible, or even terribly
   difficult to create a functional implementation for.  However,
   resources are required, which is not something any of our
   projects want to waste.  Doing high quality implementations, with
   a reasonable amount of polish for the user takes alot of time.
   Sharing this effort to get a best of breed implementation would
   seem like our only chance of moving on.