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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Merging KWord and KPresenter
From:       Michael Fair <michael () daclubhouse ! net>
Date:       2003-10-15 2:18:17
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Has anyone here discussed migrating toward the rendering and editing 
components of KWord and KPresentor into the same KPart?  Not to merge the 
applications since I think the available default toolsets and the UI 
organization of the two programs are very different, but the inherant 
functionality of those two applications seem so similar (each has ideas of 
pages with various frames/backgrounds/headers/parts embedded inside, each 
could use alignment tools, making columns, and font sizes)..

This might already be happening (I know they share the same text rendering) 
but the more I look at it, the more it seems like they each would benefit 
from having the same underlying capabilities.  KWord might not use the 
"transition" facilities that KPresenter uses, but I can think of a few useful 
cases for it.  KPresenter probably wouldn't have a use for end notes...  but 
I'm sure some bright spark can think of an innovative way to use them too.

Anyway, feel free to tell me I'm smoking something and should get my head 
examined, and of course I'm not familar with the underlying interfaces and 
structures so have no clue about how much work is involved, but I wouldn't 
expect this work to being until after 1.4 anyway.  Perhaps something for a 
2.0 release where not only are the KParts sharable but maybe every 
application is able to actually be the same part and each application would 
be a predefined set of toolbars/interface UI elements for manipulating 
certain aspects of a document.  (e.g. A "table" in KWord, is implemented 
using the same code that drives a "sheet" in KSpread.)

I would envision that the UI interfaces would remain separate and I'm not 
suggesting merging the applications.  It just seems that the actual rendering 
and manipulation of a Document/Presentation have so many common elements that 
both Documents and Presentations seem like the same fundamental underlying 
object -- not unlike the vision for an SVG document.

-- Michael --

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