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Subject: Re: Symphony contribution
From: Yong Lin Ma <mayongl@cn.ibm.com>
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Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:09:43 +0800
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A few things I like to clarify.

We are not announcing giving up Symphony development. IBM has business 
commitment with Symphony and its users.

We are willing to contribute the whole Symphony to community. The code 
would be available to the community. (The C++ part of Symphony, also 
the counterpart of OO.o in Symphony). Features/Fixes which can be accepted 
by community will be integrated into Apache OpenOffice. Since we 
are managing Symphony development with ClearCase/Clearquest, it would be 
more easier for us to do the integration. But other committers definitely 
can help and speed up the work.

By far, we should focus on getting the first Apache OpenOffice release 
done.

A little technical background about Symphony
1, Symphony is based on both OpenOffice.org and Eclipse technologies. It 
can be seen as an OpenOffice.org instance (C++) embedded in a Java window.
The menu/toolbars and the tab windows are all implemented with the help of 
IBM Expeditor(Eclipse based technology). All the C++ libraries are 
packaged 
and managed by Eclipse plugins.

2, Symphony provide Java interface and lotus script interface for 
application developer in development toolkit. OpenOffice.org extension 
won't work in Symphony.

3, A key performance improvement in Symphony is Async document loading for 
Writer and Presentation documents. User can see document content get 
displayed before the whole document content get loaded. It would be more 
difficult to integrate this into Apache OpenOffice than other features 
Symphony has


Regards.


Erik Ma

Yong Lin Ma
Architect of IBM Lotus Symphony 


Am 07/14/2011 12:00 AM, schrieb Rob Weir:
> I'm sending this with my IBM "hat".
>
> I'm going to be speaking at the ODF Plugfest in Berlin Friday
> afternoon, and will be making some announcements.  I wanted you to
> hear this first, before anyone else knows.

Great, thanks for this.

> [...]
>
> We will be doing the following:
>
> First, we're going to contribute the standalone version of Lotus
> Symphony to the Apache OpenOffice.org project, under the Apache 2.0
> license.   We'll also work with project members to prioritize which
> pieces make sense to integrate into OpenOffice.  For example, we've
> already done a lot of work with replacing GPL/LPGL dependencies.
> Using the Symphony code could help accelerate that work and get us to
> an AOOo release faster.  We've already converted the help files to
> DITA, which could help accelerate that work, if we chose to go in that
> direction.

This looks like a very big step as you giveup your separat development - 
at least I understand it this way.

Maybe you could tell us a bit more about when you plan to integrate the 
selected code pieces? The reason for asking is the following:

I hope that we first can stabilize the original OOo code to get the 
first release done - the OOo 3.4 is (OK, was) already in Beta mode, so 
just a few more fixes and then we would have our release. Now at Apache 
we may have to work on some dependencies to eleminate which otherwise 
would prevent an official release. But I think also this is doable 
within this year.

After the release is done we can make the big step to integrate the 
Symphony code and move towards a new release.

An alternative would be to stabilize the 3.4 code and then branching, so 
that we have a release branch 
(.../repos/asf/incubator/ooo/branches/ooo34) and the normal dev branch 
(.../repos/asf/incubator/ooo/trunk/). Then it's possible to work on both 
- if we have enough man power to do both in parallel. ;-)

I hope you have the same process in mind. Otherwise if you thought about 
to integrate the Symphony stuff and then doing our first release at 
Apache, I fear it will need much more time then just a few months.

> For example, the IAccessible2 work which helps
> Symphony work better with assistive technology.    I know an older
> version of this work sits in an OOo CWS someplace, but it will be
> easier to integrate that work if we start with our latest code.

Malte is knowing this part best and I hope he can help to integrate this 
well.

> Also, as the PC Magazine review notes, we've done some really good UI
> work.  I invite you to download Symphony [2] and take a closer look at
> this.  Yes, it is different from what OOo has today.  And a move of
> that magnitude has an impact on documentation and translations as
> well.   But the feedback we've received from customers and reviewers
> is very positive.  Do we integrate parts of the Symphony UI?  That is
> something for the project to discuss and decide on.

Shame on me as I don't know much about Symphony yet but looking at the 
screenshots the tabbed documents looks like a great feature.

> So that's essentially what I'll be announcing on Friday.  The above
> contributions will occur over the next couple of months, starting with
> the ODF Toolkit.  I hope you see the exciting possibilities as much as
> I do.

Sure, I really do.

Finally, I wish you much fun at Berlin, enjoy the beers and have save 
trips. :-)

Marcus


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