Including OO templates in fc4

[Ian Laurenson]

Reply in-line.

On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 21:42, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> On Lun 7 mars 2005 3:24, Ian Laurenson a écrit :
> 
> > Write a template and extension installer. This is being worked on at the
> > moment and the expertise that you people could bring to this project
> > would be of immense value. I have put together a first attempt at a
> > wizard to help people select available templates and extensions, and at
> > the click of a button download and install them. The draft wizard can be
> > found here:
> > http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=43532
> >
> > Part of this system is the ability for users to rate and review
> > templates and extensions. Thus if the Fedora Core team wanted to include
> > OpenOffice.org templates and extensions then they could use the rating
> > and reviews and a basis for which ones to include.
> 
> 
> Please don't. I can understand lots of other OSs have big problems
> distributing stuff but Linux distributions haven't. Modern Linux
> distributions are all package-based. On a package-based system any stuff
> not installed via the native packaging system is a cause of much annoyance
> and grief. I could write you a long list of other "extension"
> auto-download systems that are already hated on FC (CPAN, Maven,
> emacs/xemacs, firefox extensions, etc...)
> 
OpenOffice.org already has a package installation "feature". In
OpenOffice.org 1.1.x a UNO package needed to be placed in a folder
called uno_packages and a separate program run called pkgchk without
Openoffice.org running. In 1.9.x the ability to install UNO packages
while OpenOffice.org is still running has been introduced (Tools >
Package Manager...).

The most common request that I receive is for a system that makes it
easy for people to select, download and install OpenOffice.org
extensions - and thus my interest in it. While RPM may be the best
solution for RPM based Linux distributions, what about non RPM based
systems? On an RPM based system how would I go about making an RPM
package for an OpenOffice.org UNO package?

Is there a way that users can have the best of both worlds? For those
that are using an RPM based system that they can use both RPM based
OpenOffice.org extensions or the OpenOffice.org UNO package installer
and that the appropriate registrations are occurring as required for
both systems.

My rationale for replying to this thread was to suggest a system on
which a decision could be made for which templates / extensions should
be included in fc4. That this system is in its very early stages and, as
your email points out, the expertise of the fc developers would be of
immense value so that we don't inadvertently create headaches for other
package management systems. 

> Please focus on making good themes available. People will take care of the
> rest. As the firefox example showed not only auto-download systems are
> useless but they actually cause big problems because stuff is not
> installable in a normal way without human intervention anymore (among
> other things - I won't went all my frustration with them here)
> 
> I know for developpers types hacking another system is much more fun than
> producing booring stuff like templates. In this case I'm pretty sure a lot
> of people would prefer you fix something else in openoffice.org instead of
> inflicting yet another auto-downloader/installer on us.

I have worked on and am working on templates (and documentation). A
consistent way for all users of OpenOffice.org to be able to find
templates, know that they have been checked, and get installed in a
sensible place, would mean that more people would develop templates
knowing that they are more likely to be used.

Some constructive discussion on how an RPM based system can work well
for all OpenOffice.org users would be great! Even better would be if
through communication a system can be found that will work not only for
OpenOffice.org but also for those other "annoyances" such as Firefox.

Thanks, Ian Laurenson