From: msevior_at_physics.unimelb.edu.au
Date: Fri Dec 26 2003 - 17:33:54 EST
> On Fri, 2003-12-26 at 11:01, msevior_at_physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
>> > On Thu, 2003-12-25 at 23:57, msevior_at_physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
>> >
>> >> The manual is actually written in abiword format then run through
>> >> scripts
>> >> to convert it to HTML.
>> >
>> > Don't want to be nit picking on Christmas night but ... how come there
>> > is no transparent format?
>> >
>>
>> What do you mean? The *.abw format is perfectly readable and editable by
>> AbiWord and AbiWord format is the most widely available word processor
>> format on the planet. The scripts add extra HTML stuff that is beyond
>> the
>> scope of a Word Processor.
> OK reading through various discussions in archives I am confused now.
>
> You tell me... Does the *.abw format fullfill the transparent format
> requirements as set about by the FDL?
>
> If it is positive this is good news. I certainly did not know about it.
>
OK I Google's and found this definition of "Transparent".
"A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy,
represented in a format whose specification is available to the general
public, that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with
generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint
programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that
is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a
variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in
an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup,
has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by
readers is not Transparent. An image format is not Transparent if used for
any substantial amount of text. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called
"Opaque".
Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII
without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML
using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML,
PostScript or PDF designed for human modification. Examples of transparent
image formats include PNG, XCF and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary
formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors,
SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally
available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF produced by
some word processors for output purposes only."
OK well the AbiWord *.abw format is plain ascii XML. However our DTD is
woefully out of date. Not through malice, but because it has been very low
on our list things That Need Doing. I've done this too when introducing
new features.
That said I do know that some people inside the Free Software Foundation
edit *.abw forwat with Emacs to construct documents for their Secretaries
to read (with AbiWord :-). We certainly don't encourage people to do this
but it is possible :-) Of course all our code is exceptionally available
However the real reasons we use the *.abw format is because we believe in
our own software, we want to test our software as much possible and we
want it to be easy for other people help out in the documentation. It's
far easier to use AbiWord than any other Rich Text Creation tool.
>
>> > And a quick run through the docs says Abw is dependent on GTK+ 1.2.x.
>> > So is this an outdated doc I am looking at...
>> >
>>
>> patches accepted :-)
>
> Of course I will be happy to help. Especially so as I hope to understand
> the structure of Abiword better some time soon.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ramanan
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Fri Dec 26 2003 - 17:32:14 EST