[technology-pmc] Third party dependencies in ACTF project (Java APIs of

[Kentarou Fukuda <KENTAROU@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Technology PMC members,

I'm Kentarou Fukuda working for the ACTF project.

As in the CQ2086 (https://dev.eclipse.org/ipzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2086), 
to open the OpenDocument Format (ODF) files in the Eclipse editor, our OOo 
Editor plugin uses OpenOffice.org (OOo, the most commonly used ODF editor 
published under LGPL). The OOo Editor plugin automatically detects the 
existence of OOo in the user's machine, and it dynamically links to the 
required jars to call APIs of OOo. 

So, we do not intend to include 4 LGPL files listed in CQ2086 into CVS 
repository and plugins of our project. 

In current implementation, OOo Editor is disabled at the environments that 
do not have OOo. However, ACTF's other functions can work without OOo 
Editor. After the initial contribution, we plan to develop an alternative 
simplified ODF viewer for the environment without OOo.

In addition to this, we are also working to contribute ODF parser and ODF 
DOM as ACTF components. 
(https://dev.eclipse.org/ipzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2082) These components 
enable Eclipse community members to parse, modify, and save ODF files by 
using DOM API in Eclipse environment. Of course, these components are 
independent from the OOo. 

We use OOo mainly for the purpose of showing the target ODF files and 
accessibility error positions to testers (like a "viewer"). Most of 
accessibility related tasks (check, report, repair, ...) can be achieved 
via ACTF's ODF parser/DOM, and they do not depend on OOo editor. So, main 
tasks of ACTF, such as accessibility check and repair of ODF files, can be 
done without OOo editor. 

The large benefit of OOo editor plugin is that authors/testers can confirm 
the accessibility issues in their usual editing environment. The plugin 
allows them to confirm the error position in the ODF document by selecting 
accessibility errors in ACTF's report view. It is not essential for 
accessibility test and repair, however, it will help them much to 
understand the accessibility issue.

Is this dependency categorized into "exempt pre-req"?

Thank you in advance for your support.

Best regards,
---
Kentarou Fukuda, Ph.D.
Tokyo Research Laboratory, IBM Japan
Tel: +81-46-215-4659
E-mail: kentarou@xxxxxxxxxx