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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Unified document viewer, lack of communication
From:       Stefan Kebekus <kebekus () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-06-04 15:14:28
Message-ID: 200506041714.28675.kebekus () kde ! org
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Hi,

I just learned from Wilfried Huss that you (Aaron Seigion, Zack Rusin) have 
posed the "Google Summer of Code" task to write "join the functionality of 
KPDF, KGhostview and KDVI in a single shell". I am a little surprised that I, 
as the maintainer of KDVI was not informed about this, in particular, since 
Wilfried Huss and me have been working on a unified viewer for quite a while 
now, and have already produced a good viewer, with a well-documented API that 
already supports 3 file types. 

Since I have only limited time, I would very much like to support others 
working on the problem of a unified viewer. I would like to ask, however, 
what will become of my contributions to KDVI. I am working on the project as 
a volunteer, and invest a substantial amount of my rare spare time, I am 
naturally worried about duplicating functionality in KDE. My motivation to 
work for the KDE project would be near zero if I need to fear that one 
morning I will have to learn that a student with more time than me re-did all 
the programming I did the last months in his summer vacation, and that all my 
efforts were worthless, just because someone didn't care enough to write an 
e-mail to me explaining their intentions.

Assuming that you are no persons who like to frustrate others, or who simply 
don't care, I suggest that we keep in touch, so that duplicated programming 
efforts can be avoided. Do you agree to that? Do you believe that we can find 
a modus vivendi where everyone can contribute, or do you believe that people 
like me who have only limited time should better not work for the KDE 
project?

Can we agree on a transition process that will preserve the work that I plan 
to do in the next few monthes (good printing support for DJVU, bookmark 
support for KDVI (mostly done), some more) will not be lost? Do you already 
have a well-documented API that one could use? How much of the API that I 
have documented recently do you plan to use?

Do you plan to keep that DCOP-interface of KDVI that is used, e.g. by KILE? 
How do you plan to integrate forward/inverse search? 

Best,

Stefan.
-- 
Maintainer of KDVI

http://devel-home.kde.org/~kdvi
 
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