libgsf has landed

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

CVS head now requires libgsf.  Most of the input plugins have been
converted.  Many will actually work :-)

- libgsf is the 'gnome structured file library'
- an i/o abstraction and supports structured files
- intended to replace libole2 eventually
- currently supports import only for
    : MS OLE
    : Gzip
    : stdio
    : mmap
    : buffer
- planned support for
    : zip
    : bonobo stream/storage	(optional)
    : gnome-vfs			(optional)
    : tar ?
    : bzip2 ?			(optional)
- Potentially to include a document metadata api too.  Too be
  borrowed from abiword.

- libgsf is available as module 'libgsf' (surprised ?) in gnome cvs.
- There are no packages as yet, nor have there been any releases.
- requires
    : glib-2.0
    : zlib
    : libxml

Gnumeric is partially converted
xml DOM  : should work completely for both gzipped an non-gzipped files
xml SAX  : should work completely for both gzipped an non-gzipped files
MS Excel : converted but missing meta data and vba
STF      : converted, untested
lotus123 : converted but untested
html	 : converted but BROKEN.  It now uses libxml2 to parse the
	   html, but someone needs to walk the resulting tree.
sylk	 : converted but BROKEN until I finish the 'textline'
	   inputwrapper.
sc	 : ditto.
dif	 : unconverted
mps	 : unconverted
applix	 : unconverted
oleo	 : unconverted
xbase	 : unconverted
psiconv  : wrappers are converted, core is broken
plan perfect : converted but untested

The conversions are fairly simple (and offer a good time to do some
cleanup).  These are good projects for new developers.

The new library makes it possible to support networked files, and
should greatly simplify the lives of plugin writers.


----- End forwarded message -----

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