Re: Newbie questions

On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Michael A. Peters wrote:

> Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:10:43 -0700
> From: Michael A. Peters <mpeters@mac.com>
> To: Barry Wong <bwong@stanfordalumni.org>
> Cc: abiword-user@abisource.com
> Subject: Re: Newbie questions
>
>
> On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 22:27 -0400, Barry Wong wrote:
>
> >
> > I have read in more than one place that the program will import Word
> > files (which makes a lot of sense), but I must be doing something
> > wrong. Can anyone help?
>
> I can't help, but I don't think it is something wrong that you are
> doing.

I cannot help but think the opposite. Believe it or not you may be the
first person to have tested abiword against this specific version and
configuration of Microsoft Word. I'm interested to read "I must be doing
something wrong" but chances are there is something we could improve with
your help.

It would be a big help if you could create an account for yourself in
Bugzilla our bug tracking system and attach a sample document so that we
can test and try to isolate the problem. Hopefully we will be able to see
if the files you are having trouble with can be opened using the Linux
version of Abiword or if the problem happens on all platforms not just the
Mac. With your help there is a good chance we can identify and solve the
problem. http://bugzilla.abisource.com

In the meantime if you still have that old copy of word you might have
more luck if you save as Rich Text Format (.rtf) and try importing those
documents into Abiword.

> It should *just work* (does on Linux, mostly - some weird word files
> aren't imported correctly but I really have to try hard to find one now
> - stuff people send me just tends to work)

> When AbiWord saves to word format, what it actually is doing (unless
> they have changed it) is creating an rtf file and just putting a .doc
> extension on it.

Hasn't changed and is unlikely to ever change because it works so well.
RTF has long been the de facto standard for Document interchange between
different word processors and the Abiword developers have always put
massive amounts of time into making it work as well as possible.

Sincerely

Alan Horkan

Inkscape http://inkscape.org
Abiword http://www.abisource.com
Dia http://gnome.org/projects/dia/
Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org

Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/

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Received on Wed Oct 5 14:13:32 2005