Re: Abiword embedding

[linas linas org (Linas Vepstas)]

My intent is not to prolong this thread forever & ever, 
really, it isn't ...

> > -- graphing.  Jody is creating gog, we were looking at using that
> >    for the graphs.  Seeing how we currently embed graphs in html,
> >    the question would be, 'will I be able to embed gog graphs in abi?'
 
When this issue first came up, we wanted to embed guppi in gtkhtml.
The solution we arrived upon that time was to treat the embeded 
object as if it was a block of pixels, e.g. like a png, and let
the layout engine treat it as such.  i.e. it was "opaque" to gtkhtml,
and gtkhml only knew about its size and shape.

To draw it, some draw callback wound its way back through a glue layer 
to guppi, told it where to draw, and bingo, drawn.  To print, something 
similar.  I guess (?) it asked generic wrapper (which we wraped 
around guppi) to provide a png or ps of itself suitable for printing. 

Once we got that, we realized that we could embed anything at all,
as long as it had a fixed size, and the draw and print callbacks. 
All sorts of visions flew through our heads of 'neat things' we
could do with this cool function, although I don't think we pursued
any of them past proof-of-concept (except for the graphs).

> Yes indeed. You can either link abiword and embed the abiwidget or you can
> embed the abiword bonobo control. A week or so ago I posted a tar file
> showing exactly how this is done. If you have AbiWord > 2.0 all you need
> to do is type "make" in the tar file directory to build the example code
> (it less than 100 LOC most of which builds the gtk framework).
> It is very simple. Bonobo controls are easy to use.

I'd suggest turning the tar.gz into an html example on the abiword
website: "how to embed abi in *your* app". So google can find it ... 

--linas

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