Re: ambitions of Abi-word

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005, Custodis wrote:

> Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 20:02:49 +0100
> From: Custodis <Custodis@zonnet.nl>
> To: abiword-user@abisource.com
> Subject: ambitions of Abi-word
>
>
> Hi guys,
>
> First and in advance I would like to apologize for my limited language
> abilities. I’m not used to write English texts. I’m Dutch, so most

... likely your English will be better than most native speakers.

Uwog (one of the developers) is dutch too.

> likely I will make lots of mistakes. I don’t mind being corrected
> however ;)

> I’m looking for a good alternative for MS word and Excel (for Windows
> XP).

Abiword and Gnumeric!

> solutions in stead of getting the basic code right. So I've started
> again searching for a alternative solution and stumbled upon Abi-word
> and Gnumeric. I think the basics of both programs are fine. Using them
> gives me a good feeling. But at this moment they do not yet have the
> basic figurers need.

[figurers ... features?]

> I don’t mind waiting, but I would like to know if I’m waiting for
> nothing.

I started waiting for Tables in 2000 and although it took a long time
(years) Abiword got them eventually.

> I would very much like:
> - a roadmap for Abi in general, so the ambitions are Clair to everybody.

[Clair ... clear]

Depends very much on what the developers decide to do.

I believe there are various improvements planned for the next major
release and I dont recall there being anything resembling a fixed longer
term roadmap but gradual improvements all round.

> What are Abi-Words ambitions?

Hopefully developers like Martin Sevior will repeat some of their plans
and others will help draw atttention to what they are working on.

> Furthermore I would like to know:
> - if a mail merge with Gnumeric (and/or Excel and/or Calc) is one of the
> future goals? If so, do I have to think in monds, years or decennia?

[monds ... months, years, decades]

Not sure what you mean, Abiword has mail merge support:
http://www.abisource.com/help/en-US/howto/howtomailmerge.html

> - will Abi support scripting in the nearby future? Can Abi use the
> things that will be developed by Gnumeric for this purpose? Do both
> projects collaborate on this issue?

I forget what the current state of scripting is in Abiword but as far as I
can recally we haven't shared any infrastructure with Gnumeric in this
area (not yet anyway) although there is collaboration in other areas.

What do you need the scripting for? Abiword provides other ways to
automate certian tasks so you may not even need scripting.

> - will get Abi a better support for import graphics? (also import for
> SVG-inkscape?)

There are various plugins which can expand the Image support in Abiword.
The ImageMagick plugin for example adds quite a large amount of image
formats (might only be available on Linux, must check).

> - way can’t Abi handle big documents? The program itself uses less
> memory than Word or Writer so that can’t be the problem.

If you have problems with particular documents please file a bug report in
our bug tracking system and help us track down the cause of the problem.
http://bugzilla.abisource.com

> - will Abi change the default document format to ‘odt’ like OOo did?

This question is more complicated than you realise (and there are various
technical issues you really need to understand). Users can configure
abiword to use any format they like as the default format (using a hidden
option) but we wouldn't recommend it. Thanks to INdT who have been
sponsored by Nokia to work on our ODT support it is getting better and
better but it is not yet up to the same level as ABW or RTF.

Sorry but this is a really horrible question and I'm not going to say any
more about it.

> Well that’s all for now. A lot of questions for a newbie… I know. If
> somebody could shine some lite on the issues I would graeathly
> appreciate it.

- Alan
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Received on Wed Nov 16 20:26:51 2005