> > Why do you need the fonts to be available *locally*? I understand that
> > you want to have some extra fonts to be available, but why *only* the
> > fonts you distribute are available when you use Abiword?
> > And why don't you use the great GTK font selector?
>
> Because a word processor has to print, and to generate PostScript with
> those fonts, we must have a copy of them.
I don't know enough about X and X fonts to reply to this. I just feel it's
a pretty big flaw, whatever the reason for it is. This means that 1) My
great fonts are not available unless I duplicate them in the Abiword font
directory 2) The "everyday user" will be confused by the fact that
different sets of fonts are available for different applications.
If it's *really* impossible to write a word processor without messing
around with font files, then X has a big problem itself. This makes me
quite sad.
for printing, maybe the gnome printing framework can help...?
> > 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.
THe idea is to run ispell *once* (that is what the library I was talking
about does) and "ask it" to look up the words you
want to check, through the pipe. It's still a bit of an overhead, but
it would allow Abiword to use ispell, whilst avoiding the duplication of
functionality and files on the system.
> 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.
Could you tell me? I could send you the library that interfaces to ispell
"asjusted" for your needs...
> > (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. :)
Ok ok point taken... I told you, I am a programmer but I am completely
useless under X... :-|
> 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.
Ok.
Merc.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tony Merc Mobily, technical editor of "Dev." and "Login"
Director of Onda Training & Consulting pty ltd
Technical Writer
Personal Phone Number: ++61-8-93355105, +8 GMT, +7 from Italy!
Currently located in: Perth, AUSTRALIA
merc@cybersydney.com.au - mobily@infomedia.it