[Sugar-devel] AbiWord moving to GTK3

[Chris Leonard]

Dear Sugar Developers,

I hang out on the #abiword channel and I wanted to pass a long a
snippet of a conversation I had with one of their developers, Jean
Brefort.  I may have not represented Sugar Labs current status or
plans accurately, but that is not the point.

The points are:

1) Jean has gtk2 to gtk3 experience

2) Abiword is an important upstream:
 - We host their L10n on our Pootle server as a convenience for our
(and their)  localizers and a thank you for their code.
 - Full AbiWord is shipped in the Gnome boot of OLPC builds
 - Write is basically an AbiWord derivative and will eventually need
to be ported to GTK3 (and earlier rather than later as  Fructose
activity)

So, if any AbiWord devs show up in #sugar asking questions, please
consider it a matter of enlightened self-interest to offer any
assistance you can.  We (and our learners) will be the ultimate
beneficiaries of their success.

Regards,

cjl

	<CIA-5>	AbiWord: volodymyr * r30320
/abiword/trunk/plugins/epub/dialogs/gtk/ap_UnixDialog_EpubExportOptions.cpp:
Removed use of deprecated GtkDialog::vbox
	<cjl>	volodymyr: So Abiword is making the move to GTK3+ and PyGobject
introspection?
	<jean>	Gobject introspection is a somewhat different issue
	<cjl>	ok, I thought they went somewhat hand in hand
	<cjl>	jean, the folks at Sugar Labs are slowly working on migrating
from gtk2 to gtk3
	<cjl>	Every time they mention it, they talk about pygobject
introspection in the next sentence :-)
	<jean>	abiword migration?
	<cjl>	jean AbiWord is shipped in OLPC images
	<cjl>	OLPC images are dual boot in Sugar and Gnome and full AbiWord
is on the Gnome boot by default.
	<cjl>	And of course, the Write Activity in the Sugar side isa n
AbiWord derivative.
	<jean>	I know that
	<jean>	just I ignored that they tried to move to gtk3
	<cjl>	It is being worked on
	<jean>	which is, btw, not trivial
	<cjl>	http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/GTK3
	<jean>	how far did they go?
	<cjl>	I've seen chatter on Sugar tha a GTK rebase is close to
working. It has not gone out in any releases.
	<cjl>	The plan is to support both gtk2 and gtk3 for a while to allow
for transition fo activities.
	<cjl>	The 0.94 Sugar release is going to come out in two weeks or so,
gtk3 is targeted for the next release (0.96)
	<jean>	sure, but I doubt they ported the Write Activity
	<cjl>	jean, no that hasn't been done yet
	<cjl>	But it will get early attention, as it is important.
	<cjl>	That is why I was interested to hear that Abiword is making the move
	<jean>	right
	<cjl>	That's great news. Write wil lbe supported as a GTK2 activity
for a long time (at least a year, I think), once the core is ported
	<jean>	it's far from working
	<jean>	I'm suspecting the crash occurs in the ruler code
	* jean	hopes to have an almost working gtk3 abiword within a couple of months
	<cjl>	jean I'm not really a dev, but if you hit a wall, you can
always ask on #sugar, just explain you are AbiWord and I bet they will
help.
	<cjl>	You guys are an impt upstream and we do try to show love to the upstreams
	<jean>	ok, thanks
	<jean>	abiword is my third gtk2 to gtk3 port
	<cjl>	Since they are dealing with the same sorts of issues, sharing
successes and failures just makes sense.
	<jean>	sure
	<cjl>	wow, you may be the expert then.
	<jean>	I have some experience indeed
	<cjl>	I think bernie innocenti nick:bernie is some kind of pygobject
guru if that helps.
	<jean>	well I don't use python at all
	<cjl>	ok
	<cjl>	maybe it was marco I was thinking of, not bernie
http://marcopg.org/2011/09/12/gobject-introspection-from-node-js/
	<cjl>	or maybe tomeu
http://blog.tomeuvizoso.net/2011/08/gobject-introspection-hackfest-in.html
	<cjl>	Anyway, I know we've got some contributors that can hopefully
pull this whole thing off.
	<jean>	ok, I'll communicate on #sugar later this week
	<cjl>	keep up the good work, i'll be following with great interest.
	<jean>	need to go
	<cjl>	bye
	<jean>	bye