[Fwd: Re: Documents on the OLPC]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Documents on the OLPC
Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:53:59 -0400
From: Ivan Krstic <krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>

Tomas Frydrych wrote:
> 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)

The opinions are different, but the signals wind up being the same. I
think having a full-blown, standalone word processor on the laptop is
the wrong thing to do. But given the abundance of RTFs and Word
documents hanging around on the web, I also recognize the serious need
to provide some way to view those on the laptops, and replacing
something like AbiWord with a purely in-browser solution that reads and
writes HTML obviously doesn't address that issue.

> 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

Because of the document-viewing need, I think that the worst that could
happen to AbiWord on the laptop is to have it be patched to only act as
a viewer in some distant software iteration. And that's in a pretty
far-off future that I'm very uncomfortable predicting. For now, the
effort to get Abi running is very appreciated, needed, and not in the
least throwaway work; we will ship it, and it will be used.

> (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).

We shall reinvent no wheels! No wheels shall be reinvented, and the
number of reinvented wheels shall be zero! :)

> The lack of clear specs at this stage in the project is becoming an
> issue

Agreed; working on it (in 40-hour chunks and not much sleep). Fixing
this is my full focus at the moment.

> 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

It *might* end up being better than that.

-- 
Ivan Krstic <krstic@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D