Slashdot Mirror

Also my wv project has a passable word reader that abiword is using as a word importer, and gnumeric has quite a good excel importer

C.

100 megs my ass! I don't need all those bells and whistles, I'm just going to use my good ol' AbiSuite (www.abisource.com)... they're due for a new version soon, many cool things being added!

Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto

Right now, abiword is helping wv achieve winword exporting to go with wv's current ability to import word 2000,97 and 6 formats

Some code to help those projects would be 100 times better than waiting for any microsoft code to appear, as even if this very unlikely event took place the code would certainly be windows/intel centric and horrific to extract and integrate anyhow

Getting microsoft code will not be a magic pill, even with the best will in the world as with mozilla it is very hard to seperate and make modular huge codebases, it is even difficult to read and understand them as so much of the knowledge required to make head or tails of them exists only in the heads of the original developers

Its difficult when they want to make themselves understood, imagine if they were forced

C.

Plus, bugfixes come quite quickly (usually on the order of once a month or so), instead of in two service packs a year.

For your cut and paste problems, this is one that I remember. Currently, if you paste the same text multiple times, some of the display of the previously pasted text dissapears momentarily. However, the text is not actually deleted, and on my machine it reappears almost immediately. We are attempting to fix this bug currently. This bug is number 735 in Bugzilla.
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer


Sam TH

For your cut and paste problems, this is one that I remember. Currently, if you paste the same text multiple times, some of the display of the previously pasted text dissapears momentarily. However, the text is not actually deleted, and on my machine it reappears almost immediately. We are attempting to fix this bug currently. This bug is number 735 in Bugzilla.
Sam TH
AbiWord Developer


Sam TH

The wv library has working word import capacity right now

The basics of import are completed, i.e. word 95 and word 97 and word 2000 fastsave and fullsave support. Fastsave has always been the bugbear of word importation import, wv is on one level complete. It only requires some minor modifications here and there to complete its work, as abiword gains more features to equal word, then wv can be used to map the word features to the abi ones.

Koffice could also use wv for its word import, I wrote it as a library which should be reasonable easy to use from inside any word processor, the code to use it from inside abiword is pretty straightforward. I'd reccommend a look at it, wv has wvHtml as a standalone app to convert word docs to stylesheet enabled html which (if netscape wasn't so crap as using the data) would give almost identical html layout to the original doc layout

Its not perfect, but its as good in many aspects (or even better in some) as the commercial offerings

C.

*or* you can make a word processor which is good (better than ms word) and runs under both windows/mac and linux.

This is the idea behind AbiWord -- a cross-platform open-source word processor that uses an XML-based format as its native file format. The current version runs on Windows, Linux, BeOS, Solaris and other Unix systems. A MacOS port is said to be underway. Don't get me wrong, the features are not there yet, but I think it's a good direction...

The terms were that I'd work at the company as a consultant for a fixed period of time. Any of "my" features they decided were worthwhile could be included as part of Word or Office, but anything they decided not to use would remain my intellectual property, so that in some theoretical other life I could start a company and sell my own little word processor in competition with theirs.

Well. Do it! I don't know what your wishlist contains, but I know what mine contains: a wordprocessor that's just that, a wordprocessor, not some hyperglorified desktop-publishing-tool-wannabe 100+ MB monster. You've got some spiffy ideas for a writer's wordprocessor? Share them! You want your own little wordprocessor to compete with with Word but don't have the skills to write it? Talk to these guys. IMO, they are the only players in this free-{beer,speech}-wordprocessor game that have a clue about what they are doing. Heck, what am I saying? They have a sackful of clues!

Just so you know AbiWord has a LaTeX export feature.

I would just like to take this opportunity to plug Abiword. For me, it is by far the most usable wordprocessor around for Linux. While it doesn't have some of the features that are found on other products (like page numbers) it is making rapid progress. The binary tarball is only about 5 megs. And to the best of my knowledege, we are the only one that has an overline feature. Come check it out. You'll be converted.

"Does linux have an MS Office 2000 clone? 100% word compatibility?"

Projects like AbiWord work to address this.

"No, then it's dead in the water for corporate adoption. If there's one thing that linux enthusiasts should take to heart it is the lesson that MS has taught the entire industry: controlling one market allows you to rapidly extend into other (related) markets and then embrace the tech, subvert it, and take that market over."

What "owns" the vertical market space for thin servers? What is going into vertical areas like resteraunt software? What is expanding into desktop and embedded areas at an exponential rate?

Not NT..

I, and others, know Linux isn't perfect. This is why we work together as a coherent community, and why things like FUD will never harm us.
You do have a point about the pundits, and I hope it won't be ignored because you acknowledge Linux isn't perfect.
---

If RedHat buys Corel we should get Open Source WordPerfect Suite. This could really kill MS Office. A good well known office suite that's free! Why would anyone buy MS Office for some $500 or so.

well, somehow i don't think this is very likely. corel has way too many "other" interests that would turn off red hat.

a) windows software
b) macintosh software
c) old support contracts

that said, there are some interesting aspects of a corel buy (namely the hardware connections, the expertise, and the two distribution questions). more important, though, is that corel doesn't even make as much sense as other companies for a possible office suite for linux. a company with more focus seems to be a much better option. what about abisource? what about applix? seems that if red hat bought applix, gpl'd it, gtk'd it, and gnome-ified it that would make much more sense.

as for red hat buying everyone and everything rumors, red hat is starting to have enough money to screw up. it was fine when they could only afford blunders. it seems now, though, that they can afford disasters as well. tread lightly mr. young (and don't even think about cray)!

abiword has a pretty good word importer, using the mswordview engine wv.

It doesn't provide 100% M$ Word support yet, and it doesn't do Excel. Still, it's something and it's here today, even though it's not at version 1 just yet.

I haven't checked out koffice yet, but those screen shots look really nice.

Interestingly I have received practically no code from anyone except from some wonderful work by a few in the areas of ole2 stream reading, and some great work by two or three in the area of word decryption

So my angle on this is that Stardivision will probably get next to no useful input into their import filters from the community, the office formats are nasty and arcane and don't hold much interest for most programmers. Either that or my code smells so bad that noone wants to associate themselves with it :-), which is a distinct possibility

Anyhow, if you don't want to wait around for someone else to write a word import filter you can help make wv better, development versions at this location. C.

In fact, you may find "proof" of the existence of this software at this location.

--

I can open Emacs and write a letter to my mother. I can write a dissertation on mathematics, including the numbers to back my theories. I can write a program to look for patterns of alien life in data from a large radio telescope. I can give the source code to this software to people world-wide, so they can do cool things with their computers. I can be killed by my own government if I give them software to safely store their data because it's too effective.

--

You could always use the "wv" Microsoft Word file import library from AbiWord, which is GPLed... and you'll be able to sleep at night knowing you won't be sued by Sun.

--

The problem with Star Office is that the darned thing suffers from all the problems that Word suffers from: It's absolutely huge, runs like a dog, and has an "I own everything" user interface.

I'd suggest that if it does go OS (which I doubt it will) that the Word and Excel import/export filters get taken out and the rest get thrown away.

Wheat and chaff having been duly separated, the good bits should get turned into libraries and used with worthy products like Abiword.

My ha'pworth.

Vik :v)

When WordPerfect for Linux first came out, I thought "whoohooo!" and went out and downloaded the whole mess. Same with StarOffice. But I fire it up, and I see some problems, some things I don't like, and maybe it crashes on me. I think "hm... wonder how long 'til THAT gets fixed..." And you know what? I haven't used either one in a very long time. However, I use AbiWord almost daily. Sure, it doesn't yet have as many features, but it's off to a good start, it's not bloated, it's done right - in short, it's Free Software and it's lookin' good. And I feel comfortable using it.

I won't whine about Opera's license, some people will be happy to pay for it, and more power to them. I personally will not bother with it, and I'll keep rooting for Mozilla. Someday my Lizard will come.... :)

I needed a decent word processor for my linux box and downloaded StarOffice. I was less than impressed with the 1 minute load time. I'm running a pentium 233 with 32 megs ram. Having to go and get a snack while my documents load is not acceptable. Star Office is a real bag, and I doubt Sun is going to do much about it. Abiword is much better. It takes about 2 seconds to start as opposed to a minute, and has a suprising amount of features for an open source project. Its also 3 megabytes instead of 100+. Check it out. This project deserves some more developers.

Well, I agree with you there. They wrote up a big whitepaper and posted it on their NT Server site saying the usual stuff. Yada, yada, It's free, there's no "insurance" if it fails, you can't pay anyone to hold your hand, it was written by a bunch of bum who just have to much time on their hands, it'll make hair grow out of your nose, it'll date your girl friend, it'll send nasty e-mails to your dog. Now Steve Ballmer decides, "Whoa, This is a really good product. Omigod! It's actually a legitimate competitor to NT" What next? A recanting of the whitepaper? Is Steve Ballmer becoming senile. Is it time for Microsoft to give him a few million and tell him to enjoy life?

This reminds me of when Paul Maritz said, under oath that Abi Source was developing a very high-quality word processor. But do you think that's what they are going to be telling consumers? Tommorrow, they'll have another "bogus" Mindcraft test, just to make sure that everyone who is "important" understands what they *really* think of competition.

Sure, they can fool financial analysts, and they *think* they can fool Judges. They can even coerce OEM's to only preload their OS. They can deceptively market to consumer who "trusts" them. But they can only do it for so long.

Because, you can't lie forever. Eventually, you make that one wrong move. Microsoft has chosen their bed. Now they will lie in it.

The folks at abisource are doing a heroic job of trying to deal with the Word97 format. I initially wondered why they would read Word97, but wouldn't write it, but now I'm convinced it was an important strategic move.

I'm sorry to say that, at the moment, they're not yet production quality. 80% of the Word97 documents I've gotten have been legible or better, but one or two have not, and one blew up the Gnome session manager -- logged me out, and I had to kill off X several times (as root from a character cell console) before I could log back in. That last can't be blamed on abisource: Gnome should be impervious to such nonsense regardless of app misbehavior. If any software maintainer would care to contact me, I'll be happy to explain the details of the environment in which this happened (and send the nasty file).

I use vi all day for tasks like system administration or a quick e-mail, but I use XEmacs to write code--it's just a better environment. If I want to write a book, I can start LaTeX mode and start writing. I might even start GNUS to read news. I can then close these buffers and keep my code open. Emacs doesn't crash.

If I want to write a quick letter to be printed and mailed I'll use a word processor, like AbiWord.

A busy session with "make", "gdb" and some interactive source-level debugging can look like this screenshot. XEmacs parses gcc's output and with a click you jump right to the warning or error.

Best yet, you can do everything with your hands on the keyboard, or you can use the mouse if you feel like it. XEmacs 21, the new beta series, also has a very nice package management system. Select a package source from the Options/Manage Packages menu and it'll retrieve them from the net and install them--modes for every language known to man.

At least, more money than they're spending/losing? I haven't seen any financial numbers for this company, so if you're just assuming that they're in the black, I'd say that's a pretty big assumption. Even the CIO of Burlington Coat Factory, who's planning to buy over 1000 Linux boxes from Dell (if they haven't done so already), says, "I suppose Red Hat's business model makes sense to somebody, but it makes no sense to us."

FWIW, AbiSource's president (who I would hope knows his way around Linux) wrote an article on the joys of installing Red Hat Linux 6.0, which is worth a read for the goofballs out there who think that everyone should throw away their Macs or Windows software and start installing Linux.

Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Slashdot Realist

We must support the AbiSource guys, they are producing a very nice office, even cited by M$ in court as competition (!), and everything is GPL!!


Welcome to Linux, nice to C you here!

username: root
password: stairway2heaven

I don't need no stinkin' closed source word processor on my box. I'd rather help AbiSource finish AbiWord and put it under the GPL.

(Dollars to donuts it'll be ready before Microsoft even admits they're considering a Linux port).

hi,

AbiSource are developing an excellent GPL'ed word processor called AbiWord.

It's current tarball 0.5.1 is very usable and it is under heavy development.

It uses the GTK toolkit. And although it is coded in c++, it is very fast.

Check it out, and if you can code c++, consider helping them out, they are nice guys.

Within a few months when they reach all the basic feature set they have planned, you will never need to use MS Word again..... I think this will be one of the killer linux apps of 99.

ta,
ws.

'nuf said

Nice smile

ccg

chad @ glendenin . org

- Sam

ccg

chad @ glendenin . org

Lots of them, here.

I don't mean to keep plugging this, but the humans at SlashDot haven't, and there seem to be tons of people wanting more pictures. Check out Abi's photo page for lots of pictures from the entire event, including first day exhibits, the SlashDot party, the post-keynote party, and more.

We've got pictures from LinuxWorld online at Abi's home page, including pictures from the SlashDot party last night at Cafe Babylon.

For those antsy to see pictures of the party, check them out here , where AbiSource has some coverage of th event.