From: Jesper Skov (jskov@zoftcorp.dk)
Date: Mon Mar 25 2002 - 11:46:56 EST
On Mon, 2002-03-25 at 15:52, F J Franklin wrote:
> Hi, I'd just like to throw my support behind Alan. While I support
> gnumeric as a fine and upstanding example of an Open Source application
> for GNOME environments, AbiSuite is all about XP. If people really believe
> that gnumeric is the be all and end all of OSS spreadsheets, then, well,
> let them eat cake.
>
> Personally, much as I admire GNOME on Linux, you won't catch me using it
> on MacOSX. In fact I recommend Mesa. It's not Open Source, but it's not
> Microsoft either.
>
> There is certainly a gap here for an OSS spreadsheet, and AbiCalc or
> AbiSheet or AbiCellMaster or whatever is not a bad idea. In fact, if Alan
> is willing to pay for its development then yay! yay! it's a good idea.
> Don't, and let me repeat that: Don't, discourage him.
>
> Alan: Keep it up. Money may be the root of all evil, but the end justifies
> the means. Bravo!
I agree with all the above, FWIW.
However, my first real thought of this project (after the initial "hm...
that might be fun") is that I've come to question whether the current
Abi framework and language is the right tools.
*Don't read that as flame bait!*
Still here? :) OK. I must admit that I've had doubts about my continued
use of time on AbiWord. Not the project itself or the gang - which I
really love - but I'm feeling we're not getting anywhere (FAOD I'm fully
aware of my personal contribution the last months which is very close to
zero, AWN aside). Bugzilla keeps fighting back every attempt at reducing
the Bug counts, and doing QA, I see the same old bugs reappear after a
while.
Maybe it's just because writing a WP is tricky. Maybe it's because the
backend is stretched beyond its limits.
Whatever it is, I know that Miguels rant about Ximian's reasoning for
Mono (the massive time spent on Evolution development - I forget the
number, but it was a factor >10 over what they'd expected) is starting
to get to me.
Bottom line: when I'm now thinking about what to spend my precious spare
time on, I'm not sure C/C++ programming comes into the picture anymore.
I think, for me, the performance of computers have come to the point
where I no longer mind the thought of running my apps on a VM.
So here's the question: Is there room for liberating thoughts such as
building an additional AbiSource framework, maybe using a spreadsheet as
test app, that is both programming language and platform neutral (the
parts of .NET/Mono that I've understood - and really like. I don't know
if there's more hype to it than that, but I wouldn't be surprised).
Jesper
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