[Fwd: Re: [Clipart] OO.o page about OCAL]

[Matthew Gates]

On Thursday 23 June 2005 10:21, Nicu Buculei wrote:
> We are talking for some months about a GTK application for
> getting/browsing clipart, even Inkscape proposals for SoC contain
> "Create a Clipart Library interface".
> Why not use such an interface for clipart retrieval, classification and
> import on *multiple* applications, like Inkscape, Scribus, Gimp *and*
> OOo?
> Each of those applications can have a menu entry "Insert->Clipart" wich
> will launch this independent browser, the user can search in it, select
> a SVG and retrieve the file (or a bitmap copy, created on the fly using
> librsvg for example)

This sounds like a good approach to me - having a dedicated project would 
enable proper thought to go into it, vis-a-vis searching by keyword, and 
the like.  There are some excellent idea implemented in KimDaBa with 
respect to locating images by keyword and the like, and the interface is 
very usable too (although perhaps not as pretty as iPhoto).

How much better would this be than each application (inkscape, OO.o, 
koffice, abiword etc.) producing the inevitable file-selector with image 
preview...  IMO, a lot better!

If we implemented as a library, we could provide several interfaces to the 
selected clipart object - filename, file handle, perhaps a GTK and/or QT 
image object etc.  We could also handle on-the-fly conversion of formats, 
e.g. from SVG to rasta.  

Aside from implementing something that is good to use, I see the biggest 
challenge as getting the various applications to adopt it an external 
project like this.  One factor that might affect this is whether we 
implement in GTK, QT or what have you.  Some GTK projects might QT stuff, 
and vise-versa.

With respect to functionality, there are some nice projects out there.  
One that springs to mind is KimDaBa (http://ktown.kde.org/kimdaba/).  
Searching by meta-data is lightening-fast, and it's done with XML too (so 
it's all the more impressive that it's so fast).  Give it a try.

Just my 2 pence worth.
-- 
Matthew