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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: KWord status
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () planescape ! com>
Date:       2001-02-10 10:29:30
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> I do not intend to make anybody angry, to offence anybody or to make 
> anybody feel personnaly attacked but I would like to say a few things about 
> the current situation of KWord.

No problem.

> It is not good that the application that many people considers the most 
> important one (or that they await the most) in the whole KDE project is in 
> such a uncertain state.

Agreed... Well, start coding allready !! :)

> 1. File formats
> It would help if the work around KWord's core could still be continued in 
> the meantime. When the new KWord will be ready, most of what is needed 
> beside it would be there already. So it would save time until a stable 
> KWord exists.

I recently noted this as well, development will continue in the HEAD, on 
other stuff.

> To achieve that filters work with the new KWord and that new developers 
> feel welcome to KWord's world, I think that a few things are needed in 
> particularly on the level of KWord's file format:
> - How does the new file format of KWord look likes (I am not naive enough 
> to think it would stay the same!)

Be surprised, they will stay the same. Special commitment from the start ;)

I want to pick 2 comments to make a point:
> - Avoid tags that can represent many things at the same time. (Why is an 
> anchor a <FORMAT> in KWord?)

Because we want to create generic enough tags that allow us to easily expand
on current funtionality. Meaning that it is easy to create a new version
of kword, with different internal formatting, maybe extra funtionality, and 
still use the same file format.

> - In one word, please think also about filter developers and don't make a 
> file format that is just good for (one version of) KWord!

We know, and we did. (btw, thats much more then one word ;)


> 2. External style sheets
> Personnaly I dislike to take out the style sheet from the document. I 
> understand why HTML/XHTML does it but I do not understand why KWord should 
> do so.

The reasoning is the following (just like with stylesheets)
That a company can force styles to be used company wide, and individual workers
can not change the formatting. This is something a _lot_ of companies want..
But I recently was confinced this is more trouble then it is wourth, basically
because it is a half solution..
What you (well all those companies anyway) really want is a way to store the
info in a markup-independent style. And format it the way you want at publishing
time, but thats in the far future..

> 3. KWord in general.
> Many (potential) users awaits an application like the old word processing 
> application they have used. Care should be taken not to break this too 
> much. To give a recent example, forbiding users to have double spaces is a 
> bad behaviour for KWord (even if it looks odd!) (And filter developer 
> cannot do miracles. For example tabulators do not exists in HTML!)

We agreed it is to be a config option. I don't understand your pointer
to html, html does not do multiple spaces either...

And my opinion is that we are trying to create a good WP, not a new WP on a
non-Windows platform. So we should look closely at the mistakes made earlier
and fix those.
As to double spaces; ask any proof reader, it is the most made mistake..

> 4. Depreciated Files
> Please note in the current CVS which files are depreciated, so every 
> programmer knows that he/she should not modify anything in it, but a very 
> serious bug!
> On the other side, files whitout it can be modified and the programmer 
> could be fairly certain that his/her modifications would stay, even after 
> the change of KWord's core!
> Example: at the top of those files add:
> // This file is depreciated

Good point, but quite hard to accomplish.. I'll try..

-- 
Thomas Zander                                            zander@earthling.net
The only thing worse than failure is the fear of trying something new
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