GNOME Office and Ximian

Office applications for GNOME have been developed independently, such as the Gnumeric spreadsheet. Most are accessible from various More menus such as More Office Applications for AbiWord and Gnumeric, or More Internet Applications for Galeon. The chart rendering tool, DIA, though, is included in the main Office menu. GNOME Office integrates various independent office applications such as Gnumeric and AbiWord into a productivity suite. Sun Microsystems has also integrated OpenOffice into GNOME, making all OpenOffice applications part of GNOME Office. You can find out more from the GNOME Office at www.gnome.org/gnome-office. Here, you can link to download pages for current versions and view screen shots. A current listing is shown in Table 11-4. All implement the CORBA model for embedding components, ensuring drag-and-drop capability throughout the GNOME interface. All are based on a set of GNOME technologies, including Bonobo, Gnome-Print, and XML. Bonobo is the GNOME architecture for supporting compound documents and reusable software components. Gnome-Print is the GNOME printing architecture designed to support graphics applications as well as work easily with any printing resource. XML is used as the native file format to support the easy exchange of data between GNOME applications.

Currently, GNOME Office includes AbiWord, Gnumeric, GIMP, Dia, Eye of GNOME, Evolution , and GNOME-DB. AbiWord is a word processor, Gnumeric is a spreadsheet, GIMP is the GNOME image editing application, Dia is a diagram composer, Eye of GNOME is an image viewer, Evolution is an integrated e-mail and personal information manager, and GNOME-DB provides database connectivity (see Table 11-4).

Table 11-4: GNOME Office

Application	Description
AbiWord	Cross-platform word processor
Balsa	E-mail client
Gfax	Send and receive faxes
Galeon	Web browser
Gnumeric	Spreadsheet
Gnucash	Personal finance manager
Dia	Diagram and flow chart editor
Evolution	E-mail and calendar
Eye of GNOME	Image viewer
GIMP	GNU image manipulation program
GNOME-DB	Database connectivity
Gnumeric	Spreadsheet
Evolution	Integrated email, calendar, and personal organizer
Gnumeric	Spreadsheet
Guppi	Plotting and graphing program
Sketch	Vector drawing package
Toutdoux	Project manager
OpenOffice	OpenOffice office suite

Gnumeric is the GNOME spreadsheet, a professional-level program meant to replace commercial spreadsheets. Like GNOME, Gnumeric is freely available under the GNU Public License. Gnumeric is included with the GNOME release, and you will find it installed with GNOME on any distribution that supports GNOME. Its development is currently managed by Ximian. You can download current versions from www.ximian.com or www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric. Gnumeric supports standard GUI spreadsheet features, including autofilling and cell formatting, and it provides an extensive number of formats. It supports drag-and-drop operations, enabling you to select and then move or copy cells to another location. Gnumeric also supports plug-ins, making it possible to extend and customize its capabilities easily.

AbiWord is an open source word processor that supports such features as unlimited undo operations and Word 97 imports. It is part of a set of desktop productivity applications being developed by the AbiSource project (www.abisource.com).

GIMP is the GNU image manipulation program, which supports operations such as photo retouching, image composition, and image authoring (see the section on graphics in Chapter 12). You can obtain more information from www.gimp.org.

Dia is a drawing program designed to create diagrams. You can select different kinds of diagrams to create, such as database, circuit object, flow chart, and network diagrams. You can easily create elements along with lines and arcs with different types of endpoints such as arrows or diamonds. Data can be saved in XML format, making it easily transportable to other applications.

Eye of GNOME (EOG) is an image viewer that can also function as an image cataloging program. It is designed to be fast and provide high-quality image displays.

GNOME-DB is a suite of libraries and applications that allow easy access to different database systems. It provides an API to which databases can plug in. These back-end connections are based on CORBA. Through this API, GNOME applications can then access a database. You can find out more about GNOME-DB at www.gnome.org/gnome-db.

Ximian is a GNOME project designed to provide a professional-level desktop for GNOME that will include a full range of office applications. You can find out more about Ximian at www.ximian.com. Ximian currently provides an enhanced version of the GNOME desktop called Ximian Desktop. It also supports development of the Gnumeric spreadsheet. Its first office application is a contact, calendar, and mail client application called Evolution (see Chapter 13). Evolution has become the standard mail client for Red Hat Linux. It does not require Ximian GNOME to run. Their next project is a word processor.