[Clipart] KDE and OCAL

[Jon Phillips]

On Fri, 2005-04-15 at 16:15 -0700, Aaron Seigo wrote:
> hi everyone =)

hi

> i skimmed through the last two months of list traffic (fortunately for me 
> there was not very much =), but i have not yet subscribed to the list. i may 
> do so in future, depending on how things go. as you can imagine i'm already 
> on a few mailing lists and so try and not immediately join every single one 
> that i find interesting ;) so ... please CC me on replies for the time being 
> if you could; thanks ...

Yes, traffic is pretty low right now. It gets busier towards the end of
the month release cycle.

> ok, so why am i posting? well, i think that what you folks are doing here is 
> great, and within that context i'd to help make a couple things happen:
> 
> 	0. generate more support for OCAL
> 	1. improve the experience for KDE users
> 
> i think i (and others in the KDE project) can possibly help both of the above 
> things happen by opening the doorway to the OCAL collection for KDE users.
> 
> off the top of my head, i can think of a few things that could be done between 
> KDE and OCAL (and i'm sure you'll have a lot more ideas too =):
> 
> 	- providing a KDE application that can browse the archives (online/offline?) 
> of OCAL. this could be made a generic part that other applications, such as 
> KOffice or Quanta, could use to allow seamless access to OCAL images.

This would be great. Several people have expressed interest to provide a
browser for various platforms. It would be good to develop a strategy
for this. Yes, I think there are two flavors:

1. online - browse the repository through a web service (soap, etc)

2. offline - browse via packages that are generated on the website
officially released by the project. On this end, we need to firm up how
to make custom packages with custom file structures. A few developers
have been interested in this, so more discussion is in order to develop
something that needs to be broadly implemented so that a viewer can read
the packages.

I actually think both approaches need to be explored more, and this is
of much interest.


> 	- provide a GetHotNewStuff feed on OCAL's web site to make it easy (e.g. a 
> couple clicks) for KDE users to grab the latest / greatest stuff from OCAL.

Right, this is good. Right now this takes the form of the incoming queue
on the main page. I do think that it would be quite cool to provide an
RSS feed with the latest clipart images that we validate. The goal is to
do validation on the spot for images, but right now we let the incoming
clipart build up during a month, and then release it. I think we need to
make it build continuously for proper support of this.

On another note, a developer, Jonathan Leighton, is implementing a
weblog on the main ocal page here soon...ping to him...so that we can
provide a news feed for our planet site, and also for others to keep up
to date without having to put their antenna into the mailing list.

> 	- mention OCAL as a resource in our documentation of appropriate 
> applications, such as the KOffice apps.

Please do so...is anything holding this back? We can put affiliation
links to the KDE project and KOffice on our site.

> 	- explore ways to cross-polinate between kde-look.org (and the upcoming 
> kde-docs.org) and OCAL

Lets do it! Put me/others in contact with these projects and lets do it!

> and of course, there are opportunities for making public announcements about 
> this. now while i personally will not be able to do all of the above with 
> just my own two hands, i can perhaps help facilitate this by pitching in some 
> of my own efforts and (probably resulting in greater effect) finding the 
> "right people" in KDE to work with OCAL. reciprocation would be welcome, of 
> course.

Right, lets do it! Lets keep volleying. If we keep up the dialog, I will
create a page on the wiki (when I get back online after this flight I'm
on) for Open Clip Art Library + KDE Partnership to keep these ideas
going.

> looking at your roadmap, it seems that some of these things will become (more) 
> feasable with the realization of milestones 13 and 17, but i find it's 
> usually good to start figuring out the details sooner rather than later.

Right, we need more soldiers to help us push these ideas and the roadmap
items along. We are pushing back a lot of work because we are all
swamped on other projects.

> so... there's my brain.dump() ... what are your thoughts?

I'm totally into these suggestions. Lets keep talking on this list and
email about how to work together.

Jon

-- 
Jon Phillips

USA PH 510.499.0894
jon at rejon.org
http://www.rejon.org

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