Instigation

[David Bolack <dbolack electricmulch com>]

  I have been described by peers as a project instigator and 
provocateur.  With that in mind....

Gnome Office Mk II

Project Goals
 o Tightly integrated and cooperating Gnome technology office products
 o Single Source Install system
 o Coordinated major updates and releases
 o Unified face to the press.
 o Write some damned fine code.
 o Cooperatively produced documentation possibly for print.


How do we get there?
 o Focus
        Currently there are too many, and in some cases competing, 
projects in the mix. We need to dial it down a notch and focus on core 
office projects. To this end, we should trim down to the following active 
projects: Abiword, GnomeDB, Planner, and Gnumeric.  The other projects are 
either inactive, too general purpose, or too differently purposed and are 
better suited as standalone or as part of a suite designed for their 
tasks.  Someone should take up the baton and assemble the publishing and/or 
web oriented projects into their own bundles.

 o Fill Deficiencies
        We need a presentation project, a good PIM ( preferably one with 
good integration into the popular Gnome Email clients ), and possibly a 
report generator/graphing system. Good additions would include a smart 
dictionary downloader, thesaurus, and possibly a grammar tool.

 o Cooperate
        We're dependant on a few underlying technologies and need to 
integrate as tightly as possible with those. This would include things like 
Gnome Print, Evolution, Nautilus, Gnome-pilotalikes, and other things of 
this order. A great effort must be made to foster goodwill and cooperation 
with these other projects, even if we differ on philosophies.  And of 
course, we need to play nice with each other.

 o Public Presentation and Project Persona
        We've seen efforts to work together on big announcements and the 
saw a not so small measure of success when we did so.  More should be 
encouraged, preferably through a single mouthpiece.  Efforts should be made 
to make *M*ajor releases together.  The Office Suite should carry it's own 
versioning system independent of the releases in the suite, updated only 
when two or more members of the suite release major or minor bugfixes. And 
lastly, and possibly the hardest, consolidated look and feel.  The buttons 
need to look and act similarly. e.g. The Save icon in Abiword should "Save 
As" if Gnumeric and Planner "Save As" instead of "Save."  Skins should be 
as similar as possible. The Gnome HID should be followed where we haven't 
specified otherwise.