Subject: GPL'ed Offices to replace MS-Office (fwd-digest) (fwd)
From: oldo (oldo@CoLi.Uni-SB.DE)
Date: Sat Jun 09 2001 - 21:21:06 CDT
*note* to tomohiro kubota: this is sent to you with respect to the
xterm-utf8 and input method discussion on linux-utf8. It might be
interesting to have an interschange of ideas with the abiword developers
who do UTF8 on the GUI "front". *cheers: oldo*
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Hello!
We are glad to find the GPL'ed office suites pushing forward M$ ... :-)
And to figure out the intrinsic *.DOC format KDE/GNOME even collaborate ...
Great!
BTW: What about the collaboration on the *.SDW or OpenOffice-XML format?
It seems that many companies and institutions currently go for StarOffice
due to its rich functionality. It is a damned resource hog, but some
people seem to have fast machines ...
Anyway: I forwarded the good news about *_Melbourne University_* to some
"multiplicators" I know and to the geeks and gobos who populate our
"Computerraum" ... (i think in English it's "computer lab" or so.)
We are now arranging for Abiword Installation on our Redhat7 to check out
the multilingual functionality of Abi. (It is the department of
"Computerlinguistik" of "Saarland University" at Saarbrücken in Germany
that I am talking about.)
Because we also try to keep an eye on the "linux-utf8" efforts to
integrate and smooth unicode support on Lin-Unixes, there occured the
question of "input methods" and, e.g., the XIM (X input methods) support
of abiword. There is currently a thread on <linux-utf8@nl.linux.org> where
these topic of "input methods" is discussed with focus on xterm-utf8 to
enable console apps to receive a wider set of character input.
I don't know much about standards on this area but GNU Emacs seems to have
a great variety of input methods in MULE, whereas the "yudit" unicode
editor employs its own "kmap" methods (version 2.x has now been out for a while
and does even bidi editing).
It's an important thing to have a pluggable mechanism for input methods,
but that is presumably crystal clear for the Abi developers?! ;-)
So we would be pleased at Saarbruecken if somenone could give some
feedback on "L18n" or general "M18n" features/plans of the Abiword
developer community. :-)
cheers and good luck
Oliver Doepner
Comutational Linguistics
Saarbrücken University, Saarland, Germany
------------ Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 23:56:49 +0200 (CEST) From: oldo <oldo@CoLi.Uni-SB.DE> To: Univox Radio <univox@szsb.uni-sb.de>, CoLinuX Freaks <linux@CoLi.Uni-SB.DE>, Meike Ismar <m.ismar@math.uni-sb.de>, Bruno Haible <haible@ilog.fr>, Frank Burkard <Frank.Burkard@kfw.de>, pingos <pingos@hh.schule.de>, Holger Cröni <holger@math.uni-sb.de>, Erich Pawlik <erich.pawlik@i2c-systems.com>, Sysgroup Mathe <systemverwaltung@math.uni-sb.de>, Uwe Seibel <useibel@konaktiva.tu-darmstadt.de>, Gerd Reinhardt <Gerd.Reinhardt@kfw.de>, Hans-Ullrich Krieger <krieger@dfki.de>, Wolfgang Brüning <Wolfgang.Bruening@i2c-systems.com> Cc: abi-90@gos.von-stauf.de Subject: GPL'ed Offices to replace MS-Office (fwd-digest)
Hello mates,
there is a quick moving development going on in the office area of GPL'ed code. For the GPL "copyleft" philosophy see http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/).
Abiword (Standard GNOME wird processor) and OpenOffice (was "StarOffice") in the GNOME area, KOffice in KDE and ...
Abiword at http://www.abisource.de is developing really quick and can already be used as a decent "document viewer" for *.rtf, *.doc, *.html (XHTML!), some rich text and *.utf8 plain text ...
Wenn ihr es leid seid, für jede RTF-Datei oder MS-WORD-Dokument, das euch irgendein Win-Doofer schickt/schenkt/rüberschiebt, ein StarOffice hochzufahren und plain-txt-mäßige viewer wie catdoc oder mswordview nicht reichen, dann ist Abiword das Programm der Wahl. Es gibt ordentliche RPMs, die auch für RH6.x und Suse 6.4 gut funktionieren. Außerdem hat AbiWord einen LaTeX-Exporter (der noch im pre-alpha Stadium ist), usw.
Abisource.com macht Cross-Plattform: Abiword ist verfügbar unter Windows (tausendmal besser als "wordpad" oder ein Wordviewer von MS), MacOS, Palm, BeOS sowie native auf LIN-ux, HP-ux, SUN-os, SOLAR-is, A-ix, [Free|Open|Net|.*]-BSD oder was sonst noch GNOMEish in der UN*X-Welt rumfährt. Alles GPL-lizensiert.
Und es offensichtlich "kicks ass" oder so:
;-)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2001 18:05:03 +0200 From: Hubert Figuiere <hfiguiere@teaser.fr> To: Abiword Dev List <abiword-dev@abisource.com> Subject: Abiword used as Word replacement
Read this on: they replace Windows with GNU/Linux and GNOME. They claim to use Abiword.
http://it.mycareer.com.au/news/2001/06/05/FFX9ZT7UENC.html
It is in Australia.
Hub
------ quote from the website (inserted by oldo)-----
Trinity College, at Melbourne University, threw open the doors to open source in December last year when it discarded its Windows NT network. Educators and technical staff wanted a better, cheaper way to teach the 750 overseas students in its Foundation Studies tertiary bridging course, which introduces Western concepts and computing skills.
[..]
After being assured the HP clients would run Linux, "we couldn't get through to anyone who could give us boxes without Windows," says Wraith.
[..]
The transition removed the need for Microsoft's Office. Word, Excel and Powerpoint were replaced with open source equivalents AbiWord, GNUmeric, and the Photoshop-like GNU Image ManiPulator (GIMP). Presentation packages are not taught but if they were, KPresenter, part of the free KOffice suite, would be the likely candidate, says Wraith.
[..]
We're educating, not training," Bell says. "The argument we're talking about here is: `You have to teach Microsoft Word'.
[..]
"We do teach them word processing and spreadsheets and GIMP," says Linux guru and computing lecturer Mike Williams, "but we're also teaching the students the concepts behind them." By discovering the concepts, students are less fearful of computers than they might be if they were only narrowly trained to use a program, he says.
[..]
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