Remove OO Draw from the default install

[Bruno Girin]

On Sun, 2010-05-16 at 15:18 +0200, Aurélien Naldi wrote:
> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 1:27 PM, Shane Fagan
> <shanepatrickfagan at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > Hey all,
> >
> > I forgot to mention this at the session for default app selection but
> > can we remove Open Office Draw from the default ubuntu install? The
> > reasons are quite obvious it just isnt any good and I dont think any of
> > the regular users actually use it.
> 
> This probably deserves some discussion. I'm not a huge fan or
> openoffice in general for various reasons but it seems to be the best
> free software available for a wide audience (LaTeX, R and other great
> tools are way too specialised and techie).
> Back to OOo draw: it seems to me that it is just impress without the
> effect parts and as such I don't think it uses much space. For the
> record I do use it (mostly to do simple drawings, export them as pdf
> and insert them into latex document, so I guess I'm not the main
> target here...).

I agree with this and I would like to add a few extra points.

OOo Draw is not the best standalone vector drawing tool around, that's
true. On the other hand, it's one of the most accessible for casual
users and it is also the best tool when you use it as part of the OOo
suite, in collaboration with OOo Writer, Impress or Calc. For instance,
I use OOo Draw all the time to produce diagrams that I subsequently
include into OOo Writer documents (that generally end up as Word or PDF
docs). OOo Draw provides the simplest workflow for that type of usage,
which I encounter all the time in business environments.

So when it comes to Shane's statement "it just isnt any good", I'd say
it depends from what point of view. If you are a graphic artist, indeed
you need a more elaborate tool and you probably expect to have to
download such a specialist tool. If you are a business or home user who
just wants to include the occasional drawing into a word processing
document, OOo Draw is exactly what you need. Also note that OOo Draw has
its quirks but once you understand how things work (such as the colour
palette management), it is actually quite good. I first used it under
duress because it was the only tool that supported the workflow I needed
and I had low expectations but I have been pleasantly surprised along
the way.

One last that point I want to make it that removing OOo Draw from the
default install would mean that you would no longer have a vector
drawing tool in the default install (apart from OOo Impress but that
would be misusing it to do a job it's not really designed to do, in the
same way that thousands of Windows users routinely misuse Powerpoint to
include drawings in their documents because they don't have any real
vector drawing package at their disposal).

In conclusion, I think OOo Draw fits well in the Ubuntu application
ecosystem and deserves to be installed by default because it provides
casual users with an adequate drawing package that works out of the box,
is reasonably intuitive to use and integrates well with the rest of the
office suite.


> 
> I don't mind installing extra software so removing it would be OK for
> me, but only if it does allow a huge space gain, which I doubt (the
> size of the .deb isn't a good hint here as impress is tiny and depends
> on draw).

I agree to that too. And I think that the benefits of removing it
without crippling Impress are too small compared to the downsides of
doing so (namely: working out how to de-couple it from Impress and not
break anything as well as the reasons detailed above).

Bruno