Slashdot Mirror
AbiWord 2.2 Unleashed
uwog writes "AbiWord 2.2 marks a new milestone in the life of our beloved Ant. With a native port to MacOSX, and new features such as live updating tables of contents and TextBox support, Abi is finally a grown up Ant. Read the full announcement or go grab your own copy."
if for no other reason than it doesn't take five minutes to start up.
Tenemus pyrobolos atqui jacimus cognitiones.
I'm non-english.. I'm american, works good! Enjoy your tea and crumpets.
While the Mac version may be native, it doesn't feel like a Mac application.
Text drag & drop isn't integrated with the rest of the system, some of the text editing commands (like alt-forward-delete) just don't work, the buttons in the save-before-closing? dialog are in the wrong order and have the wrong titles, and there is just a subtle feeling of... alienness... over the entire GUI.
People who use AbiWord on other platforms should feel right at home but most Mac users will be turned off.
The Mac OS X port is certainly coming along nicely. Just the fact that it uses Aqua widgets is a Good Thing, but it still has a long way to go in the picky world of Mac users. I'm not saying they haven't put any effort into it (because they certainly have -- just look at the splash screen and the disk image background along with the general Aqua appearance). It's just that a lot of Mac users are really, really, really picky when it comes to how their apps look and behave. Hell, look at Firefox. It's come a long way with the look and feel, but there are still a ton of people who complain that the web page widgets aren't OS native.
Here's what I've noticed in AbiWord 2.2 so far. The buttons look very 10.0 and there is still some issues with ghosting or artifacting (whatever you want to call it) as you move the tabs across the rulers. The save dialog boxes aren't sheets. The formatting toolbar has some issues with dual monitors (it puts the styles menu on my secondary screen when the pull-down is close to the edge of the primary). Also, the toolbars must be treated as windows themselves, because clicking on the menu bar disables many of the menu options, making me think the document window isn't completely "active". On the positive, I'm glad there are live resizing windows and a good preferences interface. It's closer, but there's still a bit of polish to put on it before Mac users accept it with open arms.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
Oh, I so wanted to like this. It seems simple and elegant. Sadly though a simple document, created in OpenOffice, saved as MS Word, which opens just dandy in both, is trashed horribly by AbiWord.
Simple means: 1 logo graphic, one horizontal rule, text and a bulleted list.
Beyond that, why oh why oh why does every word processor default to changing e-mail addresses to clickable links? If my document is formatted in black 12 pt Arial I do NOT want anything on my page changed into blue underlined Times New Roman.
Am I alone in believing that a document intended to be printed on paper is different from a web page?
Oh yeah - and it's slow as molasses.
Three Squirrels
AppleWorks sucks and Office is tremendously expensive (almost 50% of the purchase price of a new eMac). OO could make a market-share killing on the Mac if they would get it ported for real.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Is anyone else noticing Slashdot turning more and more into FreshMeat everyday?
:P
Its all well and good with this software and what not, but this is just getting out of hand. News for Nerds, yeh, but there is a reason why we have places like FreshMeat
-Brandon
imaging if linux devs had said "what's the point in having linux now that we have windows"
what a nasty thought.
The difference is that AbiWord is truly a non-profit effort -- the purpose is to produce a nice word processor, not provide a base for StarOffice.
I think the pickiness of Mac users has a lot to do with the environment. I use both Mac OS X and Linux ab out equally often. On the Mac, I find that I get incredibly annoyed with bad user interfaces, whereas I barely even notice it in Linux.
It's really not about Mac users. It's that on the Mac there's so much uniformity in how applications look and behave (admittedly much more so on OS 9 than OS X) that your brain gets into a rut and really expects everything to work that way. Suddenly going from this to a Unixy app is like having the orientation of the ground you're standing on shift without warning - it's not going to be an entirely pleasant experience.
Compare this to a straight Unix environment, using all sorts of X apps. Every single app (more or less) behaves a little differently, uses slightly different widgets, uses different keyboard commands, and all that. It's like being on a boat - when the surface you're standing on tilts to the side, it's no problem because it's constantly swaying back and forth, and you expect it.
This is probably the core of why I have a Linux install separate from OS X. When I'm booted into Linux, I love old stand-by apps like the GIMP and OO.org. But an hour later I might be booted into OS X and running a Fink install on them and find them to be the most baneful travesties imaginable.
It is great to see people working on such complex software as office suites, the most used of all applications. While I haven't tried the AbiWord product, I have tried MANY others from open source to freeware to commercial products.
While some are able to copy a subset of features of the Microsoft's Word product, none have come close to it, let alone achieving any groundbreaking functionality. This highlights the problem with open source movements. Microsoft has spent millions of dollars figuring out how to make a product that is easy for lots of people to use, partially due to consistency in it's design, usage, and general business logic. Open source struggles to match a directed approach to design and paid research.
While it bothers me that Microsoft has achieved it's substantial leadership through clearly monopolistic tactics, I give them credit for developing some phenomanlly usable products like MS Word and Excel (Excel has to be the most powerful office appliaction in existence).
To continue my thought... and upon saying what I have, note that there is PLENTY of room for improvement. I don't see any need to switch away from the globablly dominant office products just to save a bit of cash (that's pennywise). What would make the switch worth considering is a vast improvement in usability, stability, efficiency, security, etc. Where are those advances?
I've left some obvious holes here, but they are easily answered. For example, I realize many of the projects are just getting going and they need a base of code. However, it is really not newsworthy until there is something remarkable.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
I'd agree with you absolutely. But , I figured (living in greece) that I had to make the transition from naive dumb UK english attitudes to more european and nay verily global ones. It isn't easy to do this. Greece makes europe as a whole easy because like some of the other balkan countries they don't use the latin alphabet. That helps a bit.
It's only 10 million people here so I always understand if we are overlooked, but I try. If you design for at least europe + US then you are doing pretty well. Languages that read right to left (arabic etc) and asia are much harder, and I haven't tried to tackle them yet. I guess I will some day...
But never feel ashamed that you can't hit everyone. It takes time. I haven't got there yet and I wish I could (love to hit my friends in bulgaria etc in cyrillic, but still working on it).
It takes time. It helps if you think more internationally at the design stage though. I managed mostly by accident (next time it won't be...).
There. Nobody said we weren't honest on this here forum. And (never start a sentence with and...) it is your responsibility if you are designing the program. Slap wrists time. Hey, so you are coding it too? Big deal... (no offence i hope)
Rgds,
Andy