Because a word processor has to print, and to generate PostScript with
those fonts, we must have a copy of them.
> Why don't you use "ispell" instead of dealing *directly* with the hash
> dictionary file...? A friend of mine developed a ispell interface library,
> that allows you to "query" ispell about words, "running" it. Would you be
> interested in it? You could also allow the user to create its own
> dictionary, and query is using the -p option of ispell...
> I am asking for two reasons: 1) I use a ispell-compatible alternative,
> that is A LOT better than ispell 2) I really, really don't think that
> interfacing directly with a dicionary file is a good idea...
Windows doesn't do pipes. I don't know if BeOS does. It would also
be tremendously slow to hit ispell through a pipe for every word
completed in the course of normal typing, and even worse for each word
in a paragraph upon document load. We could batch it up and check whole
regions, and then we'd get to write (and debug) a parser for ispell.
Using a library interface, instead of the way we actually compile ispell
into our binary, would definitely be possible, if one were to work
out the interface to accurately express the kinds of things we have to
know about words.
> (ok, ok, this is a feature request :-) ) It would be nice, if Abiword
> "remembered" where its window what placed when you close it (at least, the
> first one). Right now, every time I open Abiword, the bottom of the Window
> is placed BELOW the bottom of the screen... I know I can use the geometry
> options of X, but a low user...
Well, X doesn't provide any geometry options for applications. AbiWord
does support the -geometry options from the command line, and as far as
I know, they work pretty well. :)
It would, however, be reasonably easy to reserve (through our preferences
mechanism) tags to express dialog and window geometry for future sessions.
This might be logged already as a bug/feature request (Bob would probably
remember; bugzilla certainly will) and would make a good introduction
to the preferences code. :) There are some platform considerations to
this solution, and each platform's XAP_Frame will need a little (but not
much) work.
-- Shaw Terwilliger