RFC: ideas for a simple OpenDocument API

Kevin Krammer kevin.krammer at gmx.at
Sat Dec 23 11:09:41 GMT 2006


On Saturday 23 December 2006 00:59, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> On Friday 22 December 2006 21:16, Kevin Krammer wrote:
> > having a (very) simple API for creating basic documents and retrieving
> > some information from documents.
> >
> > Simple in the sense that a developer should not have to know about format
> > internals. The API can be limited to a subset of features the format
> > would be capable off, e.g. creation of a spread sheet document could just
> > support tables with simple cell types, not support cell borders, etc
>
> I also thought it would be nice to have such a library at several
> occasions. There are a couple of use cases where it really would be nice to
> have it. I'm mainly thinking about import/export, but there certainly are
> some more use cases.

I am mainly thinking about Copy&Paste and Drag&Drop, but they are in a way 
Export followed by Import just without the file in between :)

Currently most interoperability issues in this areas are failed format 
negotiations and a common, capable format would be an easy recommendation 
for "best practice", i.e. something a "sender" application should include in 
the advertised MIME types and something a "receiver" applications should 
check for before giving up.

> > Simple also in the sense that it does not have to be roundtrip capable,
> > i.e. reading and writing the document might loose more advanced stuff
>
> Not being roundtrip capable is a severe limitation, but it would make the
> library much more simple of course. I'm not sure how many use cases you
> would lose by that. Maybe it would be possible to implement limited
> roundtrip capabilities, so that at least no information is lost and e.g.
> data can be updated in a spread sheet even after t has been edited by a
> program supporting the full format.

It all depends how complex the implementation will get, how much memory it 
will need and if there is a noticeable performance impact.

I agree that roundtrip capability would be very nice, however I'd rather have 
this limitation than having to deal with a full blown OpenDocument API for 
just simple tranfers.

I imagine a simple API being part of kdelibs for non-native data transfer and 
using some KOffice library for "editing" real documents.

The KOffice developers are most likely the ones who can give input on this 
since they know the complexity involved with the full support and can likely 
estimate if partial support would be easier to implement and maintain.

Cheers,
Kevin

-- 
Kevin Krammer, KDE developer, xdg-utils developer
KDE user support, developer mentoring
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