We're generally planning to support GNOME as one of our front ends,
and while we're at it, use Bonobo for application embedding.
This will allow us to store arbitrary document data inside
our word processor documents, and allow the user to interact
with them through all the cool stuff Bonobo provides. For example,
vector graphics could be handled by Gill (the GNOME SVG editor/viewer).
Equation editing would be an excellent candidate for similar treatment.
Of course the GNOME libraries doesn't do all the work for us; AbiWord
is capable of storing chunks of non-WP data inside its documents,
but it probably not currently generic enough to handle sophisticated
types (like equations). We support embedded images this way, and it
could be rather easily extended to other types.
> I could join my effort to yours and provide an equation editor, which
> will read/write MathML and will be able to display most math symbols and
> structures.
I would suggest that your effort might be best spent developing a
polished and useful GNOME equation editor (if this does not already
exist), so that when AbiWord gets its GNOME integration together
we can work out any interaction issues. I'm currently not very
familiar with example Bonobo work, so excuse the lack of specifics
in moving this forward.
-- Shaw Terwilliger