Subject: Re: stand-alone-package of Abiword fitting on a single floppy (one file/selfextracting archive)
From: Virgil Arrington Jr. (virgilarrington@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 05 2002 - 17:14:46 CST
I, for one, think its a great idea. I've never understood why some programs
are much larger than others when they have similar feature sets. For
example, I often use another free word processor, Atlantis Nova, which fits
on a single floppy (both the setup file and the installed program).
Compared with Abi, it's short on features (no spell checker or editable
header/footer support - a shareware version has a spell checker). By
comparison, Abi is, right now at least, a 4.4 meg install file. I'd love to
see the size reduced to floppy size. But, not being a programmer myself, I
don't know what this would entail or if it is even possible.
I think the sad reality is that, with large hard drives, easy internet
downloads, and CD-RW, the floppy is all but dead and few programmers are
developing their work with the floppy disk in mind. It's a shame,
especially in the free software arena where many financially strapped users
continue with older, slower hardware and are in need of extremely efficient
code.
Virgil
>From: Joerg Schlueter <pepsiaddictedstudent@yahoo.com>
>To: abiword-user@abisource.com
>Subject: stand-alone-package of Abiword fitting on a single floppy (one
>file/selfextracting archive)
>Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2002 06:37:15 -0800 (PST)
>
>Hi,
>
>for a long time now, Iīm a user of this great word
>processor AbiWord. Iīm not a programmer at all, so I
>never thought that it could happen to me to post an
>idea to this mailing list.
>
>But thereīs one idea not referring to features or
>coding, but in general referring to the installation
>of Abiword: I thought about some kind of
>stand-alone-version in one file, that e.g. fits on a
>simple floppy disk or could be started simply by
>opening the "package file" (SFX-Archive) in Internet
>Explorer.
>
>Please donīt misunderstand my suggestion: Most of us
>have Abiword installed on their home-PC and wonīt want
>to take it with them on a Floppy Disk. But think about
>all that students at university, where just Wordpad or
>Word(viewer...) are installed because the admin
>doesnīt trust OpenSource (because he trusts the
>MS-"philosophy") - they will have to use MS Word. If
>they have a PC of their own (not every student got
>one), they will buy a commercial wordprocessing
>package for their home-PCs because they donīt know how
>to split e.g. the Abiword installation file on 4
>Floppy Disks so that they can take it with them to
>have it their home-PCs.
>
>Today, a girl I know urgently needed a good word
>processor for writing a text at home on her
>new-installed PC (OS Win95), and so I came to think:
>what about having everything on one single floppy, no
>need to tell people: "do this, do that, then install
>..." - just: "all you need is starting that single file
>on this floppy", or: "launch
>http://......abiword.exe in your Internet Explorer
>[most beginners only know that browser], then you got a
>word processor in that university CIP-Pool".
>
>This isnīt a really great idea, I think, but could
>bring much more people to use Abiword. Those people,
>not yet "lame" (I would simply call them "beginners",
>maybe they will become advanced users in the future),
>otherwise wouldnīt have a chance to take anything else
>than that normal Word97/2000 or Wordpad.
>
>I uploaded the file I took at
>http://members.xoom.it/j0erg/AbiWord.exe, itīs 1.20 MB
>- without language codes, helpfile and spell checker,
>and all I can say is: I think itīs very practical.
>
>Think about other apps like K-Meleon
>(http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net) - it would impower
>the not-advanced user to use Opensource-Software
>without having to know anything about
>software-installation.
>
>Please tell me what you think about my idea, and
>please donīt be angry if you disagree with it or
>because of my bad English; I know Iīm sending this to
>a mailing list of very good coders, and have much
>respect referring to your great work.
>
>All the best
>Joerg
>
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