AbiWord:
A Cross-Platform GNOME Office Component
Dom Lachowicz <doml@appligent.com>
Hubert Figuière <hfiguiere@teaser.fr>
Abstract
What is AbiWord ?
Cross platform Word processor
Part of GNOME Office
AbiWord's Goals and Ambitions
Word processor for the masses
Cross platform: not everybody use GNOME yet
Strong import/export capabilities: open to the world.
Really extensible
Glossary
Some acronyms:
AP: designates application framework code
XAP: designates cross-application framework code
XP: designates cross-platform code
The Future of AbiWord
After milestone 1.0 (really soon on the Internet)
Tables
Compound Objects
Embeddable
We expect them for 1.2. Not promise however.
Tables
One of the most requested features
Require a large rewrite of the formatter
Totally XP
Compound object embedding
Also one of the most requested
Would allow supporting more data inside a text
Spreadsheet (Gnumeric)
Equations (MathML)
XP and work with native embedding (Bonobo, OLE, etc.) !
Embeddable component
Already demonstrated by a Third party (OEOne)
Needs to be XP but native (Bonobo, OLE)
Examples:
Evolution
OEOne
AbiWord in Evolution
OEOne: AbiWord in Mozilla
The Future of GNOME Office
Take advantage of GNOME new technologies
Bonobo
GConf
GTK 2.0
Work with other team (Gnumeric)
Work with other Team
An escher drawing model (new canvas)
Better support for popular MS Windows graphic types
Better support for popular MS Windows file formats
Cross-Application embedability
Shared dialogs and other controls
Improved font handling
Improved printing support
AbiWord's Cross-Platform Ambitions
Why cross platform ?
The framework
Why cross platform?
Freedom of code
Freedom of choice
The framework
Our own framework.
Pros:
Integrate on each platform
Faster and lighter
Cons:
More work
What we do
Separate interfaces from implementation (abstraction)
Abstract drawing canvas
I18N and L10N
Event mapper/dispatcher
Abstract SOME controls
Activate and manage dialogs
Provide a cross-platform text formatter and management
What we don't do
Manage the widget creation and layout.
...Rewrite a complete graphics toolkit
Render fonts
Platform implementor has to provide:
Bindings between GUI events and the XP framework
GUI layout for the word processor frame
Ready made dialogs
Graphics primitives
Other platform specific features (fonts, printing, ...)
Portability ?
Still high !
The ultimate catch
Cross platform AND cross application
Ready made low level classes for any applications for each platform
Toolbars
Menus
Graphics and font handling
Printing
A multitude of dialogs
How does that work?
Two parts
The cross-application framework (XAP)
The application framework (AP)
The framework classes
Interface
XAP_Frame -> AP_Frame
Implementation
XAP_FrameImp -> XAP_GnomeFrameImp -> AP_GnomeFrameImp
This is the revised architecture planned for 1.2
How to Help AbiWord ?
Help us out with maintaining Bugzilla
File bugs and perform regression and stress tests
Help out with "bug-days"
Help answer questions on the abiword-user list
Write user and developer documentation
Translate or update an existing translation
Contribute code
Sponsor a developer
Port Abi to your favorite platform (eg: Qt/KDE, MacOS 9)
Conclusions
Questions?