On Tue, 9 Dec 2003, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
I'll work on getting at least the API documentation up-to-snuff during
the
coming week. On the whole, the parts I envision a project like Inkscape using strongly resemble STDIO's FILE operations enough for a strong similarity to be found.
I just committed a bunch of documentation. We're a bunch closer to 100% API documentation now.
Very cool. May want to think about a webpage too... at the least, a list of features.
The Inkscape file management is one area in need of major reworking. Since Inkscape is at root a file editor, having powerful file management capabilities is important. As well, some currently only blue-sky ideas are brought within feasible reach by having support for things like WebDAV, archive access/extraction, etc. Several libs including libgfs, gnome-vfs, and neon have been suggested. We will be using one of these rather than creating our own, so we can focus our energies into SVG editing. ;-)
I'm not familiar with neon, but I can definitively say that LibGSF better fits your needs than GnomeVFS. At a bare minimum, we're able to piggyback directly on top of GnomeVFS if you so choose, and with much less hassle. With LibGSF, you get superb portability to other platforms and a wide variety of inputs and outputs. Your application is inherently pluggable, at least in terms of "file sinks."
Possibly libgsf and neon would obviate any need for gnome-vfs but I haven't really looked in enough depth to say for sure. I haven't confirmed that gnome-vfs actually supports WebDAV, and if it does, how good the support is.
WebDAV is composed of a number of different methods, some basic (GET, PUT, HEAD), others more advanced (MOVE, MKCOL, PROPFIND, etc.) So when a lib or app says it supports WebDAV you have to check 'how much'. Neon supports a wide range of them, according to its feature list.
As a side note, I've grown a bit bored with working on LibRSVG. I'll have to check out Inkscape.
We'd love to have you, we've been quite impressed with what you've done with librsvg. The project's quite fun - progress is swift, there's a good teamwork attitude, and plenty of room for new ideas.
Alan had mentioned it also supported WebDAV?
If GnomeVFS supports WebDAV, so would we. If not, we could add a plugin to LibGSF probably pretty easily.
Have a look at Neon and let me know what you think. Would it be feasible to use it in conjunction with libgsf?
Cool, it sounds like this would take care of several user feature requests we've had such as cut and paste operability between Inkscape and AbiWord. There's also been interest voiced into bonobo. Most of us don't have much depth in the tech behind these so the more help/advice available, the easier it'd make it.
Yeah, if it'd be possible to get at least image/png and image/svg on the clipboard, that'd be awesome. And if you could make Inkscape into a BonoboControl, that'd be sweet too. With LibGSF, you'd be able to load and save things from BonoboStreams insanely easily.
The direction we're heading is to make wrapperization of the app easier, whether that be with Python bindings (via SWIG?), Bonobo, or even a kind of SVG Canvas. Being able to plug inkscape into other things opens lots of very interesting uses of it.
That, plus being able to interact with files (or svg streams generally) through network connections... I'm not sure I can imagine all the uses, but it would certainly make things possible that haven't been before.
Yes I noticed these in the API docs, but I was wondering what the motivation for inclusion of them in this was? Are there special XML file management capabilities it provides over what'd be available from a generic XML library?
Well, there is a really easy routine to create a XmlParseCtx from a GsfInput. There are also a bunch of nice SAX utils. There is also a nice set of functions for writing XML documents. I'm not sure if either is appropriate for your needs, but they're there if you need them.
Cool, thanks.
Bryce