Subject: Re: Embedding AbiWord
From: Hubert Figuiere (hfiguiere@teaser.fr)
Date: Thu Aug 02 2001 - 16:24:47 CDT
According to David Mandelin <mandelin@cs.wisc.edu>:
> Brief intro: I am working on a application for transcribing and
> analyzing audio/video data. We are using Python and wxWindows, and the
> app will be cross-platform and open-source. We need a word-processing
> component for the transcription part and are interested in AbiWord.
>
> Does anyone have any advice on embedding AbiWord? Are there projects
> underway? Is there anyone else that needs this?
Only bonobo support as been worked on. But it is not yet working.
> I know that there are plans to support Bonobo, but we want to be
> cross-platform. I've thought of a few possibilities: Bonobo for Gnome,
> COM for Win32, ??? for Mac; write a replacement for the App class, write
For Mac change ??? by none, null, void or whatever.... In short, there
is none since OpenDoc got steved....
> libraries to send messages to AbiWord; embed a socket server. Using
> Bonobo/COM/whatever seems the closest to the AbiWord philosophy, at
> least as this newbie sees it.
>
> Anyway, my employer is quite willing to pay me to work on open-source
> software. But first we need some idea of what this will involve. If
> anyone would give us a hint, or a pointer in the right direction, we'd
> be most grateful.
What I see is a need for an embedding architecture that will allow:
1/ Abiword to be server for anything else. That means embedding AbiWord
within another application, using OLE on Win32, Bonobo and/or DCOP on
UN*X, etc.
2/ Abiword to be client of anything else, to be able to embed any
other component. Again using the same object model.
Currently we have an XP support for scripting. This is a good start.
Also Dom started some work on Bonobo, so there definitely are things
started.
This embedding architecture should be in the XP land with a mapping
to the platform native enbedding. As Bonobo is largely inspired by OLE
and OLE itself is a subset of what could be done in OpenDoc (a CORBA
implementation), I think there are definitely common issue that can
stick to the XP land.
BTW, Mozilla's XPCOM is a good example :-)
Anybody care to comment more ?
Hub
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