Re: Open Office file formats (Oasis-open) and gnumeric

[Russell McOrmond <russell flora ca>]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Jody Goldberg wrote:

> I don't understand.

  Sounds like you do to me ;-)


Shortform:

  I have a group of Algonquin College students that as part of their class
need a 'real world project'.  I have offered myself as a sponsor for that
project.  The intention was to move forward something relating to Corel
Office import for OpenOffice.org.  We chose to import Quattro pro files as
that project hasn't been started yet, and this group of students won't be
coding until the fall (spring is for requirements/etc documentation).

  I hope to have this work up on SF/Savannah/whatever in a similar way to 
http://libwpd.sourceforge.net/  which can be used generically by any 
office suite needing Quattro pro import.

> If people want to dual license parts of the code we'd entertain that.  
> Which would simplify inclusion in OpenOffice or Mozilla.

  This is all we would be discussing.  We don't know how much code would 
be useful as I realize that there will be quite a bit that is specific to 
your internal format and plug-in interface.

  Ideal is if Gnumeric eventually made use of this common library, but
that will relate to how useful this library becomes (quality, etc).  We
are making no assumptions here, and plan to only support a stand-alone
file conversion utility from Quattro Pro to the OASIS Open Office format
(currently only loaded by OOo that I know about).

> Some of the support code is in libgsf which is LGPL (it was converted
> recently) however, that is not quattro pro specific.  It may get some OO
> support routines eventually but not in the near term.

  The students are already familiar with libgsf which is also now being
used by libwpd and thus already a required dependency for a related
project.

> >   While the OASIS group is starting with the OOo format, I believe it is
> > better to think of it as the OASIS format and not the OpenOffice.org
> > format.
>
> I have not looked at the Oasis proposals, only the OpenCalc format.
> Sadly, unless there have been some changes at a fairly fundamental
> level in the spreadsheet format I will not advocate using it.  As
> I've posted on several occassions on the OpenOffice xml lists 

  I believe the OASIS TC mailing list is open for people to subscribe and 
post to.  Have your comments been made available to that group?

  OASIS thus far has been evaluating the OOo formats, but will not stick
to them if they are fundamentally deficient.  They may just not be
receiving the level of feedback that you could provide on the spreadsheet
side of things.

> >   I don't know the GNOME team well enough to know if any of this group is 
> > already a member of this effort:
> >   http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/#members
>
> I do not see any of the gnome-office contributors there.  It would
> be interesting to join, but it don't know of anyone with the
> resources to fund a membership.

  I believe you live in Toronto?  We should talk more offline.  I am a bit
busy this month (government year end project relating to software
patents), but can push to find out if there are ways to find you funding
to get onto the TC.  I am actually surprised that RedHat, Ximian, Xandros
or other such vendor aren't sending GNOME Office folks given how important
this TC may be to the adoption of Free Software on the desktop.

Note: I don't work for government, but am a self-employed consultant.  I
am plugged into relevant Canadian federal government types via an informal
group called the GOSLING Community <http://www.goslingcommunity.org/>

> Gnumeric already supports that.  When (not if) I write an OpenCalc
> exporter people are free to use it as a default.

  This is great to hear!  Sorry that I'm not as up on Gnumeric as I would
like to be.  Too much time as a policy wonk, and not enough time as either
a developer or user of the software I'm advocating.

> It is an unfortunate comment on the current state of open source
> spreadsheets that our current lingua franca is MS xls, but given the
> available resources all of the known implementations (with the possible
> exception of kspread) have focused on MS EXcel interoperability.

  This is an appropriate migration strategy.  I just hope that with 
adequate input into the OASIS Open Office TC that a vendor-neutral 
standard can be created that will avoid this problem.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, 
 VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen 
 and not a third party.   -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/