Subject: Re: Loss of enthusiasim for AbiWord
From: Mike Nordell (tamlin@algonet.se)
Date: Fri Feb 08 2002 - 09:28:24 CST
Bryce Nesbitt wrote:
>
> This is an expression of frustration.
>
> For well over a year a serious issue caused by AbiWord has been known.
> The lack of interest in addressing this issue has just about deflated
> my interest in AbiWord.
Bryce, I think you know that non-progress can also display inability. In
this case it might be it, but then it's definitely not technical inability.
I think all, even remotely, involved in AbiWord have a pretty serious
interest in it.
> While other major changes are going into
> Abi (like multithreaded loading), and other minor changes (e.g.
> named colors like "lightblue")
[...]
> Yet it's been closed (as "irrelevant") several times,
It's not irrelevant for AbiWord. It's irrelevant in the manner it's not a
bug on our behalf, it's a missing design from the ones designing X. Maybe X
is coming to its end in its current incarnation? (please read on before
flaming)
Currently, in the "world" we need fonts that display the same way on
CRT/LCD/FFT/... as on printer. Microsoft took one path, Apple has taken
another path now (with Display PDF). Still, X is holding (us all) back it
seems to me.
Some time is the time to ditch all old cruft and create something new. If
you want backwards compatibility you create a wrapper/emulation layer.
Perhaps it's time the X consortium did just that? I don't know, it's just an
idea.
Do you know of any other WYSIWYG editors in X land that gets display and
printing fonts the same without the apparent problems AbiWord has? If so,
what do they do different from what AbiWord does?
X seems to me to be a technology holding printing back, since no-one really
_want_ to change it (X), but still almost everyone sees the need to get
display and printing on-par. Perhaps suggestions to the X consortium would
be better, to "make" them incorporate a "printing device" with another
aspect and resolution to your screen so you could use the same code-path to
_print_ as you use to display on screen? I know many bad things can
(rightfully) be said about Microsoft, but this is one of the things they
actually got reasonably right - over ten years ago.
> This attitude towards the health and welfare of
> other programs running on Linux harms AbiWord, and it's a shame.
Bryce, I can't for my life believe that we have this attitude. Perhaps it's
that no-one has responed since no-one feels up to taking on the X group (and
it _is_ and X problem)?
/Mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Fri Feb 08 2002 - 09:29:42 CST