Re: abiWord under ODIN in an OS/2 environment

From: Alan Horkan (horkana@maths.tcd.ie)
Date: Tue Oct 14 2003 - 13:47:52 EDT

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    On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Stan Goodman wrote:

    > Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 16:24:49 +0300
    > From: Stan Goodman <sgoodman@hashkedim.com>
    > To: abiword-user@abisource.com
    > Subject: abiWord under ODIN in an OS/2 environment
    >
    > I have installed the Windows release of abiWord v1.99.6 under ODIN in an OS/2
    > v4/52 partition of a desktop machine. (ODIN is a simulated Win32 environment
    > which runs under OS/2). Friends have informed me that they have done this

    I remember Odin, I vaguely recally that parts of it based on Wine (no idea
    to what extent though).

    It is fantastic to see that abiword (just about) runs on yet another
    operating system! I dont think anyone had even considered that we might
    be able to reach out to OS/2 users

    I have had difficulties running Abiword on Wine before, things were much
    improved with the CVS builds from before 2.0 and it was just about usable
    but I really must try it again soon.

    > successfully. which is why I chose abiWord for my own needs. I myself have
    > another Win32 application installed in the same way, and it works properly.

    > abiWord did install without complaint, once I gave it the MSVCRT.DLL file that
    > it complained it couldn't find. I accepted the default choice of installation
    > directory, so that its directory structure is under the "C:\Program files"
    > directory pre-existing in ODIN.

    We'd definately expect MSVCRT.DLL any of our windows users with Internet
    Explorer 5 or above would have it.

    > When I run it, it loads and is displayed *almost* completely correctly. What is
    > missing is that the Font-choice window is empty, and that typing into the main
    > text window produces no result at all.

    Hrrm, I cant really suggest anything helpful so the less said the better
    ...

    > There is another problem in connection with the Preferences notebook:
    > This window opens, and I can set various options in it, although some
    > options are, strangely greyed out. The real problem is that, once
    > opened, the notebook cannot be closed, except by rebooting.

    Frankly that is just weird.

    You can work around it by directly editing the file Abiword.Profile, I'm
    pretty sure there is some helpful advice in the FAQ about editing the
    Abiword.Profile and I cannot stress enough how important it is to read and
    carefully follow the instructions (I had to read the instructions a few
    times before I got it right, but all the information you need is right
    there).

    The Abiword.Profile gets put in the "Application Data" directory and on
    older single user versions of windows that dont have the %userprofile%
    variable it gets put in %windir% in a folder called Abisuite.

    If I was the kind of person to make random guesses (and I am) I'd guess
    that abiword might have entirely failed to find somewhere to save the
    abiword.profile and it is what has cause the lockup, but that would
    irresponsible random geussing.

    The options you mention that are permanantly greyed out are probably the
    button style options, and that is a known 'feature'. The functionality
    does exist, it has just never been wired up to the front end.

    You can set this functionality in the Abiword.Profile by changing
    ToolbarAppearance="icon" to
    ToolbarAppearance="text"
    ToolbarAppearance="icon" or
    ToolbarAppearance="both"

    (While I'm at it I may as well mention there is an option to use
    incomplete Vi or Emacs keybindings which may be of interest to
    programmers)

    > What is clear is that the underlying problem can't be dismissed as
    > incompatibility of abiWord with the ODIN-OS/2 combination, since this

    I blame Odin! Oops, you asserted that we couldn't do that.
    You sure there are not any tricks you can try like specifying a fake fonts
    directory in whatever Odin uses instead of the windows registry?

    > installation has been accomplished by others.

    Unless it slipped through when I was not paying attention (or more than
    three years ago) this is definately the first I've heard of anyone running
    abiword on OS/2.

    It is quite possible that some problem has crept in since earlier
    releases. If you could find out what version of Abiword people have been
    running successfully it would be helpful.

    If there are many people interested in running abiword on OS/2 they should
    definately let us know, future changes to properly support Unicode might
    make things a little more hairy for OS/2+Odin users so the more
    regular testing you guys can provide the better we will be able to
    accomodate you.

    > What I am asking, therefore, is comments on what the two visible
    > problems described above suggest in the way of their cause.

    Haven't a clue.

    Testing will be extremely difficult as none of us have OS/2, I strongly
    encourage you to get your friends who are already using abiword to get
    involved and help us out.

    It might be a good idea to create a bug report in bugzilla to help us
    track this issue. http://bugzilla.gnome.org File the report against the
    windows platform for now

    Welcome to the club, I hope we can figure this out.

    Sincerely

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