Subject: Re: Development of Abiword for MacOS X ?
From: Julian Morrison (julian.morrison@virgin.net)
Date: Wed Feb 09 2000 - 12:36:35 CST
Martin Sevior wrote:
> On Mon, 7 Feb 2000, Julian Morrison wrote:
> >
> > However, the text-editor component built into OsX already has 99% of a word
> > processor's features right out of the box, so porting Abi Word is probably
> > pointless; a kid could assemble nearly equivalent functionality with a
> > couple hours and a copy of the interface-builder app.
> >
> But would it import/export abiword/WORD/Latex/RTF/docbook (and later SVD
> and MATHML, excel files, gnumeric files etc etc)?
>
> A Word Processor has to talk to the world not just itself.
(This is assuming we're talking about an app built from the ground up to the
OpenStep design philosophy)
Basically, the OS text component stores attributed strings and displays them.
You can add or tune the objects that display it, you can add or tune the objects
that lay it out, and it is rendered to output files through a system of
converters. The built-in converter makes RTF text, or RTF/picture bundles.
However, as each app adds converters eg: to Abi's XML, to Word, to whatever,
they become automatically part of the system and any other text component gets
them too. In the same way, an image editing app would add into existing apps
that can embed images the ability to embed different kinds, and a spreadsheet
might add the ability to embed and output gnumeric and excel data.
Once you grok it, OpenStep is *nice*,
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