Pinneberg

The Pinneberg Files

What is it?

Pinneberg is a concept document that aims to describe what OpenOffice.org as a product, as a technology and as a web site will be in a future, regardless of any set and identified milestone. This is a collaborative effort. Pinneberg is a medium sized city that is just outside Hamburg. Hamburg is the home of the StarDivision team. Pinneberg is thus Hamburg, but just a little bit different.

Key concepts

• OpenOffice.org has to become a set of online and offline applications
  • OpenOffice.org as a suite has to become a wiki platform
  • OpenOffice.org has to be rearchitected, especially in regard of its document and filters parts - it needs to become a set of independently usable toolkits.
  • Documents, more precisely ODF documents, should be editable both offline and online. One platform should be used to do this: OpenOffice.org .
  • As the document metaphor is changing, OpenOffice.org should change the way it handles document and the way documents are used (in a broad sense) by users.
  • OpenOffice.org has to handle documents dynamically like a browser. Several users should be able to view and use the document at the same time. Also documents could be read dynamically, perhaps like a diaporama.
  • In order to do this, OpenOffice.org has to use some kind of a server-side component. However, given the context of Pinneberg, an actual server-side platform should be considered, offering three kinds of roles:
    • • server side of an OpenOffice.org client
      • server side of an OpenOffice.org web client
      • server platform (aka, the Server) a new, improved version of OpenOffice.org designed only for server use.

• • Ultimately this server component would be distributed and freely available for download
  • The OOo project however should be the first operator and host of this server and provide adequate services
  • As a goal, OpenOffice.org (aka Pinneberg) will be a modular suite of applications that will be available both as web applications (in a browser) and as connected/disconnected clients. Pinneberg will also entail the Server component.
  • What this entails is two major architecture changes: one is the server component development, the other one is a deep change in the way the document part (document & filters) is handled by OpenOffice.org , as documents will have the ability to be edited and used both on the Server and through the client at the same time
  • The modularity of applications will otherwise be accomplished through the architecture changes driven through the ODF Toolkit effort.
  • An ideal starting point for all this would be a wiki integrated with OOo.
  • Work hypothesis: developing the SERVER as an UNO server so that UNO/URE can be streamlined across each component (server, webclient, standalone spreadsheet, word processor, etc.)
  • What Pinneberg is not: a new wiki language or syntax. Ideally, Pinneberg works first with the existing OOo wiki (i.e a mediawiki platform) but it can then work with other wiki syntaxes and languages. What Pinneberg provides is a set of ODF-centric server,client and online apps .

Existing problems

• Resources
• Architecture issues: need to redesign the document and filters part of OOo ; ODF Toolkit might not do the whole trick...

Preliminary Plan

How do we want to achieve the Pinneberg vision. In order to make this theoretical work a reality, we need to agree on a set of preliminary objectives (see above) and then break each of them into smaller, well-defined features, issues, projects. Some of these objectives cannot be easily translated into a RFE or a definitive feature set (aka: "OOo has to become a wiki platform") but we can already define some concrete steps in order to achieve this vision (i.e: ODF@WWW).

• Agree on preliminary objectives: participation of everyone required!
• Break down these objectives into three main categories: Infrastructure (Inf), Architecture (Arch), Applicative Level (App)
• Coordinate on the next IRC meeting (19th of September, 5 pm CET).

• Breakdown of Categories:
  • Infrastructure (Inf): Anything related to the OOo infrastructure: website, wiki, servers, organization, resources.
  • Architecture: (Arch): OOo suite's architecture (udk, tools, framework, xml projects concerned)
  • Applicative Level (App): Applicative level (writer, ui, etc.)