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Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2012 10:41:09 -0400
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Subject: Re: OpenOffice in Java
From: Rob Weir <robweir@apache.org>
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
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On Fri, Jul 6, 2012 at 10:30 AM, Phillip Rhodes
<motley.crue.fan@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 12:36 PM, Fernando Cassia <fcassia@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:41 PM, suhail ansari <suhailazaz@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> A Java spin-off of AOO written in Java on the other hand, starting
>> from scratch, would be good. Call it AOO-Lite.
>
> That's actually a pretty intriguing idea.  Not a full AOO, but
> something that could be loaded with JWS/JNLP, that would provide at
> least a lightweight editor for ODF documents, would be pretty darn
> handy.
>

I was involved in something like this many years ago, at Lotus.  We
took the "SmartSuite" code and ported parts of it to Java.  Back then
the aim was to create applet versions of them.  It was possible,
though difficult, to do back then.  We only had AWT at the time, so
very primitive.  As we know, the ensuing competition and legal
wranglings nearly killed Java-in-the-browser, so that project died.
We also did another version, based on activeX, again as
programmable/embeddable components.

So I think re-creating a heavy-weight traditional editor in Java would
be a waste of time.  Yes, it could be done.  It might even be faster
than AOO, since rewriting code tends to lead to more efficient code.
But it would consume a lot of time, and by the time we had something
we might find that the market had past us by.

IMHO, the more interesting thing would be lighter-weight component,
maybe HTML5 based.   Data-aware, both common web formats like JSON and
OData, but also ODF-aware.   A spreadsheet component that you can
easily embed into a website.  Not only for ad-hoc use, but as part of
an overall application.

That is one of the top requests I hear for the ODF Toolkit -- a
reusable editor widget.

-Rob


> Whether or not it would need to have any association with AOO at all
> strikes me as an open question, but the idea itself has some appeal...
>
>
> Phil