From: Alan Horkan (horkana@tcd.ie)
Date: Sun Mar 24 2002 - 15:35:48 EST
I find it rude and insulting that you think I was ignorant of other
the wealth of other obvious solutions.
Of course I could use something else, duh!
There was originally an idea, that Abiword would be an office suite
and/or used for cross platform development.
I hope that more developers will see the wisdom of developing cross
platform software. I highly value cross platform software.
Does Gnumeric even have a Gtk only version? As far as I know Gnome is
more likely to run on windows before Gnumeric is.
So telling me to use something else instead is insulting my intelligence,
telling me to use a program so firmly rooted in Gnome is frankly annoying.
> Ok, I think I can understand the temptation to "become" an office suite,
> piece by piece or all at once it's the same, but (and maybe I'm just
> being very obtuse) I really don't understand why do so.
Because it's there and because why not?
I was hoping there might be a developer with the same itch and that I
could encourage them to make a start. I was just making a reasonable
offer.
I not suggesting the reinvention of the wheel here. I beleive strongly in
the importance of abstraction and trying to keep the parts as reusable and
separable as possible, but that the reuse of a library, a component or the
portability between operating systems. Orthoganal seperability and
component and code reuse all the way! So the obvious answer is probably
to reuse code from Gnumeric and other sources. No where in my proposal
was there any suggestion that this had to be written from scratch.
> AbiWord as it is gives already so much work to its core developers and
> is so "incomplete" as far as a decent word processor needs to be (it's
> more or less on the word pad league on most of the features, but has
> surpassed it in others).
AbiWord developers are free to do whatever they like and if my
proposal takes their interest then so be it.
It was a proposal with a small monetary reward and you gave me the kind of
response like as if i had made a whining complaint demanding a feature.
You never know it may produce useful ideas towards how tables are
implemented in Abiword. It may have serve as a fast prototype to be
junked once it has served it short term purpose.
Some of the developers have already said they intend to do some SVG work
possibly including a drawing or presentation program. I'm making a
reasonable suggestion, I would appreciate a more reasonable response or
none at since you obviously have no interest what-so-ever in taking me up
on the proposal.
I cant believe you compared Abiword to wordpad.
> If you're so interested in having a spreadsheet component, I can't see
I dont want a spreadsheet, and I dont want a component.
I want a cross platform program seperate from abiword that
resembles a spreadsheet to achieve a small and very
specific set of tasks that I would normally do using a spreadsheet.
I also hoped to encourage *Abisource* developement.
If it does not run on at least Windows and Linux then it is useless to me
as I expect to be using both Operating systems for the years to come. I
have paid for windows and there is no way I am throwing it away, even the
hassle of upgrading to linux is barely worth it. I used windows 2000 for
about a week before switching back to Windows 98, so my inertia is huge.
> why not use one that has so much potential and is so good. All the work
> that needs doing is work that would benefit both abiword and gnumeric.
>
> If you really want to waste time on an AbiSheets (hmmm) or something
AbiCalc, the name has precedence and is already copyright
AbiSource/Sourcegear. Personally I dont want to encourage a rash of
programs with silly names, we already have enough
silly Win/Lin/Gnu/Gnome/K/Qt names without adding Abi* to the mix, it just
seemed like a good way to make my point clearer.
> like that, then do so, by all means, if you will feel better and more
> productive that way :)
> I just pronounced a sensible question... there are quite some office
> suites that work on GNU/Linux systems, and yet there is not ONE word
I use Windows, and ocassionaly Linux or BSD. I might buy a Mac when it
next comes time to upgrade my hardware, who knows what the future will
bring. I value cross platform software very highly.
> processor that can compare itself at the technical level of LaTeX. Not
> ONE that can be compared at the easy to use level of MS Word. I think we
> need to concentrate our efforts into making one hell of a good word
> processor (that even church secretaries can use). Why waste time on a
> spreadsheet when there is one hell of good spreadsheet program?
The greatness of LaTeX and the making of a great word processor have
nothing to do with my proposal.
"We" are free to spend "our time" and are resources however "we" choose.
It would not be a waste of time, it would be a choice. Let a developer
decide if this interests him (or her), and dont criticise me for making a
reasonable offer you obviously have no interest in.
If no one shows interest in my AbiCalc proposal within a month the offer
will be withdrawn and I will probably just keep using Open Office or
possibly write something myself in Java.
> Peace... rms
you argue and complain and then you use an overly informal and friendly
way to end your message.
how about "Yours Sincerely" or even better the Portuguese equivalent.
I took a long time to carefully consider this reply. I rewrote and
re-read it several times and I still feel insulted and annoyed.
Later
Alan
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