Re: Documents on the OLPC

Hi,

> On 7/10/06, Ivan Krstic <krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
>> I should have a spec about this available soon. To be perfectly level
>> with you, and while I use Abiword and like it quite a bit, I see any
>> real (standalone) word processor on the Laptop as a crutch to be removed
>> as soon as possible in one of the next software iterations, and in favor
>> of a minimalistic, Writely-like in-browser solution that directly
>> integrates with the wiki. This is my personal opinion, and isn't
>> universally shared here; more details in the spec, and I'll remember to
>> point you to it when it's up. Until then, excuse the brevity of the
>> following answers.

OK, let me be frank too. There are very different signals coming out of
different ends of the OLPC base-camp, and that is not good (I spoke
briefly to Jim Gettys at GUADEC and he was quite clear that AbiWord is
wanted on the laptop); in any case to make the application work well on
that kind of a HW is not a trivial task (as I am sure you know), and
people might not have that much motivation to put their free time into
it if it is to be just a temporary fix until the real solution is in
place (or perhaps the wheel is re-invented? -- for better or worse,
world is full of word processing documents, and mostly in one, not very
tinkering-friendly, format).

The lack of clear specs at this stage in the project is becoming an
issue -- Jim said during his talk at GUADEC that for apps to make it on
the first batch of the production machines they need to be ready by late
autumn; well, we need something more to work with than pretty pictures
if that is to happen.

Tomas
Received on Wed Jul 12 18:33:40 2006