bonobo-draw-0.1 released

[Mike Kestner <mkestner ameritech net>]

Dear lovers of componentized drawing libraries,

bonobo-draw-0.1, codenamed "Dude, did you just call me Fluffy?" is now
available via sourceforge ftp at:

http://ftp1.sourceforge.net/bonobo-draw/bonobo-draw-0.1.tar.gz

What will bonobo-draw become?

A library of bonobo canvas components and client side helper objects to
provide all the
functionality found in the drawing library of that non-free office
suite.  The general idea is to be able to create a ShapesLayer object on
your canvas-based app and, in so doing, add a full-featured drawing
layer in 5 lines of code or less.  Tada.

How much of that does 0.1 do?

Not much.  The RectShape and EllipseShape objects are roughed in with
solid fill, outline, and shadow support.  The Shapes collection supports
unordered shape aggregation.  The ShapesLayer is roughed in and merges a
drawing toolbar and sometimes allows you to create, move, and resize
rects and ellipses.  

There is extreme flakiness when used with the AA canvas, moderate
flakiness when used with the gdk canvas, and probably even flakiness
compiling on any machine other than my Vaio.  It passes distcheck and
sometimes works for me.

This project draws upon code extracted from the Achtung presentation
program.  Thanks to Joe Shaw and Phil Schwan for graciously letting me
steal some of their code.  Thanks also to Michael Meeks for badgering me
into putting the code in GNOME CVS and subsequently sending a couple of
patches.

I make this arguably useless release with two goals in mind: personal
fame and fortune.  A distant third is an intense desire to get people
who are much brighter than me fixing all my broke code and helping push
the canvas and bonobo to places they've never gone before.

Download it.  Build it.  Try out the gdraw-canvas-container sample app. 
And send mail to bonobo-draw-list sourceforge net telling me how much it
sucks and precisely how you could've done better (preferably in diff -u
format).

Please.

Mike