Abiword for Windows [Re: OpenOffice.org]

On Sat, 5 Nov 2005, Ryan Pavlik wrote:

> Date: Sat, 05 Nov 2005 00:34:57 -0600
> From: Ryan Pavlik <abiryan@ryand.net>
> To: sxxx@o2.pl
> Cc: abiword-user@abisource.com
> Subject: Re: OpenOffice.org
>
>
> sxxx@o2.pl wrote:
>
> >Hi,
> >
> >(I've lost my mail, so I'll just put Alan's words in quotes as I
> >can't reply directly)

No worries.

> >And what about Win32 version? :) I guess I can't expect all those
> >printing features I mentioned in my last post, to be added to
> >Abiword anytime soon.

"Developers, developers, developers" as Steve Ballmer says. Frankly it is
a miracle Abiword is so good and (except for the earliest days) it is
maintained entirely by unpaid volunteers. Those who are most interesting
in programming are more likely to be interested in systems which make
programming easier or more fun so it is even more remarkable we have been
able to attract the talented few to help with the windows version of
Abiword.

I used to help out testing the Windows versions but nowadays I use Linux
because it gives me more freedom and control over my computer (there are
downsides too which is why I also use my old copy of windows too).

> > And I need them. This leaves me no choice but
> >to use OOo Writer, though I liked Abiword for it's user-friendly
> >interface and it's speed.

Nice of you to say that, thank you. Although we use the slogan "Word
Processing for Everyone" sometimes we fall short of that ambition but we
keep trying.

> On the other hand, even on my home machine
> >OpenOffice (2.0) loads up to 15 seconds and runs at reasonable
> >speed, so it's not as bad as many say. It's also 100% stable as far.

That has generally been my experience of OpenOffice too and although 15
seconds is not fast it is not such a big deal. Some of the bad reputation
OpenOffice has is due to the Linux versions of OpenOffice 1.0 being much
slower (and if my experience with OpenOffice on Mandrake a few years
ago is anything to go by there may have been a bug or two on certain
systems causing it to take minutes to load).

> If you really wanted to use AbiWord, our import and export is quite
> functional - it would not be impossible to do the majority of the work

For someone who cares as much about layout fidelity as Mr Sxxx it is
entirely understandable that abiword is not his first choice and I cannot
say I blame him, although I hope he has learned in future he will getter
response if introduces himself differently.

> in AbiWord then export to RTF, the de-facto standard for WP document
> interchange, which OpenOffice.org should be able to read.

(some of the problems were the fault of OpenOffice but I couldn't say for
sure about recent versions)

> While I regret that we don't have more featureful print support on
> Windows, it's not exactly a point and click issue to implement.

Developing software is hard! It is so hard I have a tough time explaining
how complicated it is. Most of the word processing software you will see
for windows will use the same built in Rich Text widget (and the printing
support which goes with it) as provided by Microsoft but Abiword always
needed to be platform independant and had to build a lot of things from
scratch.

> Also, printing to PDF Creator (
> http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator ) then loading the PDF in
> Acrobat Reader should give you plentiful options for output.

I wonder if there is some way we could steamline this process, perhaps a
PDF Creator plugin (if I understand correctly PDF Creator builds on top of
Ghostscript anway) or failing that maybe the installer could optionally
prompt users to grab a copy of PDF Creator? (Personally I'm not a huge
fan of installers which ask for additional downloads and fail to include
all the necessary bits but most people don't seem to mind.)

I really should try out PDF creator for myself but I hardly ever print
anything. I am fairly sure I went through the process of getting it all
set up before and manually invoked the pdfwrite utility included with
Ghostscript and I expect PDF Creator gets rid of most of the tedious bits
I had to do back then. (And to make life difficult for myself I might
have to try it on ReactOS.)

> >I can't tell right now, cause I don't have Abiword installed on my
> >machine. But try to export some formatted document to HTML and check
> >closely how it looks.

Despite what some people would like to have you believe HTML was never
supposed to give you precise layout (using tables was a dirty hack, and
CSS is unreliable to put it politely). I do not blame you for expecting
more from our HTML export, far too many graphic designers with copies of
Dreamweaver have been entirely missing the point of the web for over a
decade now. Expecting precise layout fidelity from any format other than
PDF or Postscript is a really bad idea, different versions of Microsoft
Office cannot even keep things consistent so it should be no surprise we
have some difficults (but that is not an excuse, we understand that even
though it is not our fault it is still our problem).

What I like about the HTML exported by Abiword is how clean it is which is
useful if you want to edit the HTML source in some other program.

Perhaps we could do more to preserve the layout too for users who do care
about maintaining presentation as much as possible but it would be a
mistake to out put terrible markup to do it (like older versions of
Dreamweaver and most versions of Microsoft Word do).

The Abiword developers carefully considered these things and made
reasonable tradeoffs where they were forced to but of course I understand
how doing things that way fails to meet the needs of some users but
sometimes you cannot have it both ways.

> If there's a specific problem you have, please report it. If you even
> have a general problem (listing, say, some features which export wrong),
> report it to http://bugzilla.abisource.com/

I understand how much hassle and effort it can be to provide feedback and
we already appreciate you taking the time to explain what you didn't like
about abiword. We welcome you to stick around try and help us to improve
Abiword if you can.

> >As a conclusion, I must say I'm rather not going back to Abiword,
> >for a number of reasons:
> >- virtually no printing options on win32 version,

I can understand why abiword is not suitable for you but I hope you will
not give up on us entirely and maybe the parts of abiword you do like will
be enough for you to try abiword again in the future (even if you need to
use something else to help with your printing needs).

> >- poor export/import in general,

I am always pleasantly surprised how well abiword does.

Perhaps you will judge us a little less harshly if you read this document
which tries to explain the level of support you should expect
http://www.abisource.com/support/expectations.phtml

Having said that some of your harsh criticism is quite useful.

> >- still not good enough compatibility with MS Word,
> >- not suitable for bigger documents (don't make me tell why, I
> >assume that you know),

There are some known issues with large documents but they are difficult to
track down and get detailed information about from users. We rarely hear
anything about these issues except vague indirect comments on the web.

> >- lack of other utilities (excluding Gnumeric) making up an office
> >suite.

strategically it would be great if we could bundle abiword along with a
whole bunch of other programs to get our foot in the door (you might be
interested to try out theOpenCD.com) but in real terms it adds even more
work onto an already mountainous task.

I'm hoping maybe in a few years we will see a whole Gnome applications
suite or distribution (and development stack) for Windows but maybe that
will never happen (and some developer will look at me funny like I'm crazy
for even suggesting the possibility).

> >P.S. You don't have to believe me, but less than a year ago, Abiword
> >had some problems with reading it's own *.abw files properly, and

It is not a question of believing you are not but rather about how
difficult it is for anyone to find the time to track down and fix all the
problems in abiword. It could be a lifes work.

> >I'm not quite sure if this has been improved yet.

It may well have been fixed already, certainly if it was something we
noticed it would have been fixed. Abiword (.abw) files should always give
you the best results with Rich Text (.rtf) coming a very close second.

> AbiWord is not a conspiracy - there are no grand secrets or schemes to
> keep needed bug fixes from users. When users realize that in this way,
> they can cooperate, the developers can spend more of their time doing
> what users would probably prefer that the developers do: develop (fix
> bugs, write features, etc)!

As Ryan said: help us to help you!

> (We generally use AbiWord ourselves for word processing, so it's not
> like we're developing from some ivory tower or something...)

> Thanks for giving AbiWord a shot! With the help of users, we'll be able
> to provide the best word processor on the market!

I'd take bets on Abiword still being around in twenty years time, like a
much loved old-fashioned typewriter.

Thanks all for your time and interest.

Sincerely

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

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Received on Sat Nov 5 20:47:24 2005