GSoC07: status update, refactoring feedback request (libabiword diet)

Hi Dom, Devs,

here's another update on my progress, scroll down if you're only
interested in giving feedback about future refactoring.

Status update
-------------

Status for "plain vanilla" abiword build (using libabiword-builder):
Cocoa: bails at linking stage (any help appreciated!)
Gtk: works
Win32: works, tested only cross-compilation on linux / running under mingw

Known to be missing is the "menubutton" option and hildon support for
the gtk build. I've been in contact with Tomas and Etrunko over how to
get this fixed and possibly do some cleanup along the way (currently
it's a mix of XAP_SIMPLE_MENU, XP_SIMPLE_MENU / XAP_SIMPLE_TOOLBAR,
XP_SIMPLE_TOOLBAR defines and separate layouts in
ap_Menu_Layouts_Embedded.h / ap_TB_Layouts_Embedded.h).
Personally i'm in favour of using separate headers for different
layouts to avoid stepping on other platform's toes.

Apart from compile time options (optional spelling, gucharmap,
printing) I've been focusing on supporting more plugins in
libabiword-builder. Currently 11 of 53 plugins are supported, my goal
is to add support for 3 more each workday (a simple plugin takes about
10min).

What occurred to me is that by having abiword and the plugins in a
single build system it should be rather straight forward to support
static linking, I'm planning to pursue that in the future.

Refactoring
-----------

In the recent years it has become pretty clear that we won't do
another "Abi" application, at least not in the src/af + src/wp way the
tree is laid out. I'm proposing to work towards a src/lib + src/app
layout. That means for example that at some point all dialog code
would in the same directory (e.g. src/app/ap/$platform). Advantages
are:
+ Buildsystem would be easier, no need to build 2 convenience libs
e.g. in src/wp/ap/xp, some files there will be needed for libabiword,
some for the actual application.
+ Tree layout would reflect reality, in which we are working towards a
standalone library and application that's using it.
+ There's a number of hacks anyways, that circumvents the src/af vs.
src/wp split (e.g. src/af/ev stuff, which depends on icons in src/wp),
that would be cleaned up.

What do you think?
- Rob
Received on Wed Jun 6 14:56:25 2007