Re: Wanted: Caretaker of the ODT backend

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

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Hi Christian,

On 24.9.2013, at 15:18, Christian Moe <mail@christianmoe.com> wrote:

> 
> Hi,
> 
> I don't have the developer skillz.
> 
> Otherwise I'd be happy to help out any way I can, e.g. tracking issues
> and requests, digging into ODT format, replicating bugs and testing
> patches on a more systematic basis.

Thanks, this would be great.

> 
> (The latter two assuming I can root out the setup/installation weirdness
> that seems to affect my local ODT export.)
> 
> I see Jambunathan has placed his patches in the public domain under a
> GPL-compatible CC0 license. Other considerations aside, doesn't that
> mean they could be applied in Org?

Putting them under CC0 means that we could use them, and that Emacs
could in principle use them as well.  However, Emacs has made the *choice*
to only include stuff for which they have the copyright assignment to
the FSF.  (Stefan does reiterate this in the thread following Jambunathans
message). Since Org is distributed as part of Emacs, this also applies
to us.

I have looked at the patches.

1. Implement an alternative format for description lists.  Description
   lists are, I think, already "supported" by the odt exporter, even
   though odt does not seem to support them natively.
2. As far as I can see, this mainly implements a simpler way to access
   attributes internally.  It does not fix any bug I would know about.
3. Introduces some kind of new way to force page breaks.  I don't
   see why we need it.
4. adds jabref support.  Sounds interesting, but I don't know if anyone
   here uses it or would like to use it.

So I don't think any of this is required at this moment.  But it would
be great if you could keep en eye out for mailing list requests and
bug reports around this exporter and try to get things fixed when necessary.

Thanks!

- Carsten


> 
> Yours,
> Christian
> 
> 
> Carsten Dominik writes:
> 
>> Hi eager Org mode contributors
>> 
>> One more try - it would be really nice to find a volunteer for this task.
>> I can do this myself - but it would take time away from other tasks.
>> 
>> - Carsten
>> 
>> On 18.9.2013, at 06:38, Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> I am looking for someone who knows about the internals of the ODT file format, and who would have time to become the responsible person for ox-odt.el.  Since we cannot take patches from the original author (Jambunathan) anymore, this module is currently orphaned.
>>> 
>>> There are a few recent patches Jambunathan has made and published here:
>>> 
>>>     http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=15384
>>> 
>>> We cannot take them (due to FSF rules and for other reasons as well) - but the new maintainer can take a look at them and see if there is functionality or bug fixes we need and re-implment those.  For the rest I would hope that you can watch the mailing list and Emacs bug reports for issues related to this backend and try to fix them, obviously with support from the mailing list.  Also,maybe there are ideas for additional functionality?
>>> 
>>> Please write to me if you are interested.
>>> 
>>> Thank you.
>>> 
>>> - Carsten
> 


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