Re: Abiword and Images

Alan Horkan wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Sep 2006, Giancarlo wrote:
>
>
>> Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 23:25:26 +0200
>> From: Giancarlo <gcmelzi@yahoo.it>
>> To: abiword-user@abisource.com
>> Subject: Abiword and Images
>>
>>
>> Team,
>> I recently installed Xubuntu on my old PC: it's mainly used by my
>> wife for emails, and my daughter for emails, msn and writing docs.
>> She started using AbiWord and she is happy with it: quite better and
>> quicker then the old version of MS Word she had under WinME on the same
>> system.
>>
>
> Abiword can run on Wine so I must check that you are running (not just the
> GTK version but) the Gnome version of Abiword? The gnome version in
> particular uses Gnome print and produces higher quality and more reliable
> printing well worth the small extra requirements (Gnome is not actually
> required).
>
>
>> Everything was perfect, until she asked me to insert a picture (a jpeg
>> image) into the file:
>> - the file size increased with no reason
>>
>
> Adding an image will not link to it but include it directly inside the
> file, unlike how it works with a web page.
>
> As Hubert mentioned the JPEG is getting converted into PNG. On top of
> that it is getting converted to text using base64 encoding.
>
> The upside is that if you were to use ZABW the file size would come back
> down significantly but it still wouldn't be ideal.
>
> The abiword developers have been aware of the limitations and downsides of
> this approach since the beginning but OpenOffice didn't exist at the time.
> I expect if they were doing things again they would use a zip container
> like OpenDocument but any change now would break back compatibility.
>
> Even if developers were interested in adjusting the file format there
> would be a massive onslaught of even more questions about switching
> entirely over to the OpenDocument standard.
>
> File format changes wouldn't gain many user visible improvements and with
> the other difficulties outlines I'm not surprised no one is rushing to
> work on it. At best the most likely point of progress would be to cut out
> the extra JPEG -> PNG conversion which would help significantly.
>
>
>> - it takes ages to do everything
>>
>
> If you check bugzilla there are a few known issues which you may have
> stubled upon but just in case you have found something new an example
> document could be helpful in tracking it down.
>
>
>> Btw, I've tried printing to .pdf and then printing the .pdf /got/: same
>> result, although Evince shows everything perfect.
>>
>
> >From that it does sound like you are using the Gnome version of
> abiword and you may have found a bug in the printing system.
>
>
>> Haven't seen these problems between bugs (although several printing
>> problems are listed), so may be it's just something solved, already.
>> Can you provide some help, please ?
>>
>
> I'm not as familiar with all the bugs listed in the tracker as I used to
> be but it doesn't immediately jump out at me as a known problem but others
> may know better.
>
> Sincerely
>
> Alan Horkan
>
> Inkscape http://inkscape.org
> Abiword http://www.abisource.com
> Open Clip Art http://OpenClipArt.org
>
> Alan's Diary http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/
>
If you're using Breezy or Dapper, you are using the gnome-print version
(2.4.2 or 2.4.4) so that isn't a concern. I have had trouble printing
images on the Dapper version (abiword-gnome is the package name for me)
- they come out as solid black rectangles, but print OK with evince. If
the black doesn't work in any program, then I'm inclined to believe
you're just either out of black ink or your cartridge is plugged, either
of which is probably easiest remedied with a new black ink cartridge.
The other suggestions Hub and Alan offered should hopefully apply to
your other questions suitably.

Thanks for using AbiWord!

Ryan

-- 
Ryan Pavlik
AbiWord Win32 Platform Maintainer: www.abisource.com
AbiWord Community Outreach Project: www.cleardefinition.com/oss/abi/blog/
"Optimism is the father that leads to achievement."
 -- Helen Keller
"The folder structure in a modern Linux distribution such as Ubuntu
was largely inspired by the original UNIX foundations that were
created by men with large beards and sensible jumpers."
 -- Jono Bacon, The Ubuntu Guide
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