Re: Generic Embeddable plugins.

Le mercredi 12 janvier 2005 à 16:27 +0100, Luca Padovani a écrit :
> Hi Jean,
>
> On Wed, 2005-01-12 at 16:14 +0100, Jean Bréfort wrote:
> > The plugin should do that, not abiword. I do not think it is so
> > difficult.
>
> I think that the main difficulty is letting the plugin work with the
> internal AbiWord document model. This is not generally easy. Think of
> bonobo plugins where there is no guarantee that the plugin will run in
> the same address space as AbiWord. I already went thru this issue when
> implementing the bonobo component for gtkmathview.

I know the problem, but it can be solved. A bonobo component can
exchange text with its client. So dumping the xml root node to memory
and sending it to abiword is feasable. Probably, we need to derive a new
bonobo interface but this is quite straightforward.

> > > Far better, imho, to store all generic embedded data as base-64 encoded
> > > data along with the name of the responsible plugin, a mime-type, and a
> > > base-64 encoded image preview.
> >
> > IMHO, we should have keep a human readable format as far as possible,
> > even for embedded objects.
>
> I personally do not consider human readability of XML as a strong plus,
> except for debugging purposes. I think the neat advantages of having
> embedded objects be represented as actual XML instead of serialized,
> encoded strings would be more automatic processing of AbiWord documents
> (say with an XSLT stylesheet), and automatic searching. My understading
> on the reluctancy of AbiWord developers on this point is that they are
> (rightly) concerned about complexity and (possibly backward)
> compatibility of the AbiWord document structure.

Human readability warrants that the data will not be loosed if binary
format changes.

Regards,

Jean
Received on Wed Jan 12 16:49:29 2005