Re: Footnotes/Endnotes: Have They Worked for Anyone?

From: Alan Horkan (horkana_at_maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Wed Nov 26 2003 - 05:47:39 EST

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    On Tue, 25 Nov 2003, Mark Richardson wrote:

    <snip>

    > I too have been waiting for the footnote/endnote function so that I could
    > use Abiword for my own academic work. I'm very happy with recent
    > developments (2.0.1) and want to urge my students and colleagues to try
    > Abiword (I teach university-level writing). I'd like to hear from anyone
    > (college students/instructors) with ideas for urging students to eventually
    > adopt Abiword as their *primary* writing tool. What technical problems have
    > been encountered? How have they been overcome? (Abiword on Zip disk is one
    > great idea I hadn't thought of.) Have there been significant
    > file-sharing/compatibility problems?

    If you were impressed by Abiword on a Zip disk you might be even more
    impressed by abiword on a floppy disk.
    If you take just the Abiword.exe and use UPX to compress it it will just
    about fit on a single floppy disk. Unfortunately you have to sacrifice
    the dictionary file (no spel chcking!), which all by itself is too big to
    fit on a floppy disk but it is still an interesting way to demonstrate
    how fast and light Abiword really is.

    > A side point: Writing teachers need to modify multiple student drafts
    > quickly--showing both original and revised versions. Does anyone have advice
    > on how to do this quickly (minimum number of steps) while showing "before"
    > and "after" versions clearly in the same document?

    Somoe of the developed worked on adding versioning functionality
    to Abiword but I've not used it, I'm not sure it was ready for public
    consumption (i really must check these things).

    > Any ideas on this would help us teachers open up the academic community to
    > Abiword.

    A 'clue-by-four' ;) with which to knock some sense into people.
    it is a heavier sturdier version of the well known cluestick.

    Seriously though I'd suggest making sure not to offer files in Microsoft
    Word format (unless you absolutely must) and offer the files in reasonably
    open standardised formats such as PDF, HTML and provide Abiword (or even
    StarOffice/OpenOffice) format for those who wan to have more easily
    editable versions of your files. Which reminds me, I should follow my own
    advice and be distributing more Abiword documents of my own.

    > (Apologies if this does not respond directly enough to the preceding
    > message; this is my first posting.)

    No worries, the user list is intended for all kinds of general discussion
    about abiword.

    > > I'd move to AbiWord in a flash if it weren't for one problem: footnotes
    > > and endnotes. They've been listed as a feature since Version 1.1x, but
    > > they've always seemed to be more broken than working -- even in my copy
    > > of the just-released 2.0.1 (Windows version).

    As you teach university level writing I have no qualms whatsoever about
    instructing you in the etiquette details of writing email.

    http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html
    I'll not bore you with the details of RFC 1855 but just one piece of style
    advice for writing email:
    It is best to trim away the original message and leave only as much as is
    required to give your response some context.

    <snip>

    > > own dumb mistakes. Thanks for all responses!

    If you are familiar with Unix the command line utitlies style and diction
    might be of interest to help you to analyse peoples writing

    Sincerely

    Alan Horkan
    http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

    PS I criticized your writing but I am well aware that my own writing is
    rather poorly structured and prone to unusual grammatical contortions.
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