Congratulations on AbiWord 0.51, it is really
shaping up nicely. I'm particularly impressed with
the recent Word 97 importer work.
Question. Has there been any thought of supporting
a read-only viewer based on the AbiWord code?
The absolute top priority item that I am missing from
my Linux enviroment is to be able to read the
Word-97 email attachments that people around here
insist on sending. It looks like AbiWord
could handle the job now (particularly since
most Word attachments aren't particularly complex,
or interesting ;-)
Using AbiWord as a viewer for other formats such
as WordPerfect would also be useful.
One possible benefit of a viewer-mode to the AbiWord
project is that it might provide some earlier pounding
and feedback for the importer and layout engine code.
A viewer wouldn't need most of the toolbar, nor would it
need a spellchecker. Ideally the viewer would be usable as
a plugin for Netscape or IE, much like the Acrobat PDF reader.
A viewer should share most of the AbiWord code from
DLLs, and it could have an "Edit" button that would
fire up a full AbiWord editor on a local copy of the file.
I'd be willing to take a look at the coding for this myself,
if there is support for the idea? (However, if this is
considered urgent then others might want to lead since my
familiarity with the AbiWord source is low at the moment.)
John Ellson