Re: [Inkscape-devel] Joining GNOME Office

[Dave Malcolm <david davemalcolm demon co uk>]

On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 18:33, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> 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.

Re. Conglomerate:  we're building a general purpose XML editor aimed at
end-users for "document style" DTDs, focussing initially on DocBook.  So
we'd love to be able to embed Inkscape for editing SVG subtrees within
our users documents.  I'm not sure how much we'd be able to offer you in
return, though! (This is rather blue-sky right now, though)

> 
> > 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
> 
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-- 
David Malcolm
www.conglomerate.org