Re: Moving some plugins back into the main tree?

> DocBook, WML and XSL-FO are markup languages if I'm correct. I don't
> understand at all why anyone would want to use markup languages inside a
> word processor like Abiword?

Not so much for importing and editing, but for exporting. We export
HTML too, which is a markup language. It's in the main tree. And we'd
be skewered alive if we removed it. It's arguably one of our most
useful features.

> Don't know what OpenWriter is, but StarWriter is legacy now that
> StarOffice uses OpenDocument. If it's legacy and unlikely to be used,
> just keep it in the plugins.

OpenWriter was the file-format predecessor to OpenDocument. It came
between StarWriter and OpenDocument. It has a lot in common with
OpenDocument.

> Off-topic, but related to file formats: the Abiword file format is split
> into normal (.abw), template (.awt), gzip compressed (.zabw) and bzip
> compressed (.bzabw). Why 3 differrent formats? If OpenDocument files use
> compression by default, why can't Abiword do the same for .abw and
> dump .zabw and .bzabw?

We're considering doing that in the 2.5.0 development series. I had
changed it to emit compressed files by default, with an option to turn
it off. I'm not sure if someone (including myself - the last few weeks
have been a blur) has changed that back.

And OpenDocument's compression is an artifact of them basing their
file formats around the ZIP archive standard.

-Dom

-- 
Counting bodies like sheep to the rhythm of the war drums.