Re: GnuCash page on GO site

On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 06:58:16PM +0000, Charles Goodwin wrote:

| This is why GO is important as a meta-project, so that the member
| projects can share dependencies and GO can be distributed in a manner
| not dissimilar to OOo or MSO, where the libraries (and both OOo and MSO
| have many) are installed seemlessly with the suite.

Hmm. So long as the apps are all leveraging the same library, this
may be true.  I think the situation you don't want to end up in is one
where there's this horrendously large multi-function library, which each
application only uses a small part of, but must be installed to get any
one of them to work individually.  Note this applies to a set of smaller
libraries, as well.

What -- then -- are the common functions which [most] GO apps can leverage?

From GnuCash' perspective:

1/ financial calculation API/implementation -- interest rate computation,
   &c.
   * could-also-be-used-by: gnumeric, [gnome-db?]

2/ graphing -- visual reporting, {line,bar}-charts, pie-graphs, of
   temporal/account/funds-movement behavior.
   * could-also-be-used-by: mr project, toutdoux, gnumeric, gnome-db, abi-word

3/ reporting -- I'd be happy if at least the front-end of gnucash reporting
   could leverage a library, such that gnucash didn't have to implemnt
   a report-generation sub-program. GnuCash could instead focus on
   application-specific data-transformations into that generic reporting
   framework.
   * could-also-be-used-by: mr project, toutdoux, gnumeric, gnome-db

4/ time-handling -- date/time format, time computation, recurrent-events
   * could-also-be-used-by: gnumeric, gfax, galeon, evo, gnome-db,
     mr.project/toutdoux

5/ widgets -- specifically:
   a/ register [or, a generic cell-range editor abstracted which a
      financial-account register could be built on]
   b/ calendar/frequency manipulation
   * could-also-be-used-by: nearly all if the widgets are general purpose
     enough.

6/ printing
   * probably everything, but is this "office"-specific?

7/ configuration
   * there's probably some "office"-specific config [mail server, org
     structure/roles, &c.] ... but it also seems not necessarily "office"
     specific.

Specifically about (4) and (5), and maybe even (2) ...  Derek's point
is well-taken: why are these just part of gtk or glib if they're that
general-purpose?

| Obviously this would be a bit different on Linux where distributions
| will always have a choice, but it is important from a Windows (and
| MacOS, QNX?, BeOS?) perspective.

Some might say that it's even more important on Linux, because of all
the choices available.

...jsled

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