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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Unified document viewer, lack of communication
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2005-06-04 16:19:21
Message-ID: 200506041019.22369.aseigo () kde ! org
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On Saturday 04 June 2005 09:14, Stefan Kebekus wrote:
> 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.

as i've been trying to explain to Wilfried, what kviewshell provides and what 
the bounty is looking for are two slightly different things. one is a 
"application that can morph into several types of viewers" and the other is 
"a viewer the supports several types of files".

> 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

i would hope that it continues to be used. kpdf is now using xpdf-as-a-library 
for rendering, and i think that is a very sane route to take for this 
specific use case. KDVI could be perhaps similarly utilized.

> 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?

seeing as 95%+ of people working on KDE have limited time and that the general 
mode of operation in KDE already is "working together" i don't think this 
will be a problem. the area of viewers, be they image or document viewers, 
has been very bad at this in the past (look at how many of them we have), but 
that's something that we can fix.

> 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?

first, the person who takes on the bounty will be the final arbiter in what 
they decide to do. on top of that, their code may not even get finished or be 
good enough for inclusion, and no one may even take up that bounty. so this 
is a bit of "putting the cart before the horse".

> 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?

these are design decisions that would be made largely by the person doing the 
work. as mentors, Zack and i would be responsible for ensuring that they have 
access to the right information and people. in this case, you'd be one of 
those people.

but again, until we even have someone who's interested in this, we're jumping 
the gun and getting excited for no reason =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

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