Hi Mox,
Since Sun has a big influence in decisions related to OpenOffice.org,
I would be very interested in hearing, what is your individual (or
collective) opinion on one of the main goals of Mac OS X port: "User
Interface respecting Aqua Human Interface Guidelines"?
The very first goal of the Mac port must be to make the underlying
multi-platform toolkit, i.e. VCL working exactly as it does on all other
supported platforms. This means using VCL's own controls, its own menu
system etc. This will ensure that VCL is working correctly using native
APIs (Carbon/Quartz).
The next steps will be adding more system integration like native widget
rendering, system menu support, etc. (work which has already been started)
Changing the user interface in general is out of scope for the pure Mac
porting project as it would affect all platforms and a lot more modules
than just VCL. On the other hand OOo would benefit from it on other
platforms as well, so this is a decision that might be driven by the Mac
port but has to be done separately. Again, to be able to benefit from
such a huge rework, the Mac version must be in the same shape as all
other versions. (Did I say that this means porting VCL first... ?)
Personally to me, this means creating a version of OpenOffice.org that
in _some_ _cases_ will not be "documentation compatible" with other
ports (Win, Linux).
For a concrete example, Mac OS X system reserves Function keys
(F1-F12) for system use and they are thus not available to OOo. There
are also other standard system commands that overlap OOo. Beginning of
the work is here:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Porting_-_Keyboard_Shortcuts
I think those are issues that can be and have to be addressed once event
handling, painting, window handling, printing, font support (including
CJK, CTL, bidi), international keyboard input, clipboard, drag and drop,
etc. are working as expected.
Reworking the menus and shortcuts should be possible on a per platform
basis as those configurations are basically XML based. Some shortcuts
are probably hard coded but those can be considered as bugs that have to
be fixed.
On a higher level example, should the Google SOC2007 OOo project about
XML UI succeed, will it be ok for Mac OS X port to diverge in the OOo
UI to meet the high quality standards that Aqua HIG recommends and Mac
OS X users require?
I doubt that this will be possible after a few months of work. You
probably remember our evaluation of XUL as a possible UI framework at
least for OOo dialogs. It turned out that besides technical issues
(bootstrapping of gecko etc.) the main hindrance was the deep cross
linking of OOo's core code and the UI. Separating the UI from the core
is an important requirement before any major UI rework can be started.
Another aspect is Apple's recommendation to prefer modeless dialogs.
Making the majority of OOo's dialogs modeless would be another huge
effort that is not platform specific but an important step towards
becoming HIG conform.
Any volunteers ?
Stephan ;)
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