Subject: Tables & Embedded Objs: Must have on 1.2
From: Rui Miguel Seabra (rms@multicert.com)
Date: Tue Jan 01 2002 - 22:33:14 CST
Ok people.
The UK gov seems to take us (other too, we're that previledged
unfourtunately) quite fondly:
* Abiword is fast, clean and stable. It has a limited set of features;
minimalist tables and no embedded objects. It can interoperate with
Word by using rtf files and has a capable Word doc file importer, which
can even handle fast saved documents. Word documents that use
unimplemented features like tables have their formatting corrupted on
import. The Word doc exporter is very limited, and not installed by
default. Parts of this document have been written with Abiword. It is
slightly unusual in that it is a cross-platform project, and works on
Windows, Linux and other Unix flavours, Macintosh (alpha) and several
more exotic platforms (QNX, Beos). Abiword works very nicely, the
behaviour is intuitive and in some respects it is easier to understand
than Word. It interoperates within its limited set of features; the main
missing features (full table implementation, embedded objects) seem
unlikely to be complete within at least six months. Until these
features are complete, we could not define it as viable.
* Kword is much more fully featured than Abiword. It has embedded
objects, tables, footnotes, automated table of contents and an equation
editor. The version tested was 0.8, part of the KDE 2.0.1 release and
suffered some stability problems; the Word document importer froze on
documents that Abiword handled perfectly. Stability is much improved on
earlier versions. Kword is viable, but until the importer is stable it
is not usefully interoperable.
What this seems to show is what the 2 main goals for 1.2 should be (if I
had to name them): full table implementation and embedded objects.
It's also very nice to see how we have been appreciated around early
October. I'm sure they would praise us even more right now.
Congratulations are in order to all, and I hope everyone agrees that we
have to focus on those two features. Notice how well they studied
AbiWord: "It has a limited set of features; minimalist tables (...)"
Hugs, rms
-- + No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown + Whatever you do will be insignificant, | but it is very important that you do it -- Ghandi + So let's do it...?
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