I have no idea where we're at with any of this,
I'm going to be a bit disappointing on this topic below :-)
This email is far from disappointing, Quentin. In fact, we seem to be
much better off than I originally thought. :)
- Ability to create generic documents from Workspace (bonus points if
they're OpenDocument-compatible)
Workspace is still in development, but without document orientation
implemented, however it shouldn't be difficult to add it.
How difficult would integration with OpenDocument be, though. I think
that would be a really strong point for Etoile, if done effectively. We
may actually want to wait a bit, though, because there is a
Cocoa-native version of AbiWord, and when AbiWord gets OpenDocument
format support, we would have a strong base to build our compatibility
from.
- Ability to add objects to documents -- at least two different
objects,
I would suggest the text object and the image object
We need a component/document framework which is still to be drafted.
I don't understand what the drafting process entails, but would
certainly be willing to help with whatever anyone wants to throw my
way.
- Ability to launch components and manipulate objects -- as suggested
above, perhaps a spell checker for the text object, and maybe a simple
formatter (bold, italics), and for the image object, some type of
Maliwan-based or PRICE-based component for image
filtering/manipulation
Here, we need the previous framework. I don't know what is the current
state of Maliwan… Banlu ?
- Display of Lucene-based searching capabilities
ExtendedWorkspaceKit has some API support for such possibility but I
would like to improve it, and we need to think how we are going to
bridge it with LuceneKit at implementation level (indexing daemon
etc.).
The next two probably wouldn't be ready for the first LiveCD, but they
would definitely show off the power of Etoile:
- Ability to view folders as projects/desktops (nothing more complex
than
my Flash demo)
hmm may be… however it is probably easier to implement this than
component/document support mentioned previously.
Interesting... if that is indeed the case, this is definitely something
to consider sooner rather than later...
- Ability to use one component to edit two different object types,
for
example a text tool that understands the context of where you are
working
and will generate true editable text over a text object, or rasterized
text over an image object
That should come for free with our components architecture if we
design it correctly I would say.
Groovy :)
J.
