Abiword problem in 4.2

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ecomoney
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#16 Post by ecomoney »

So is the word processor not going to be fixed?

Like I say, it is probably the most important tool for the people I work with...what about the people that cant run Openoffice?
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WhoDo
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#17 Post by WhoDo »

ecomoney wrote:So is the word processor not going to be fixed?

Like I say, it is probably the most important tool for the people I work with...what about the people that cant run Openoffice?
I didn't say that. I meant that I wasn't going to prolong the sometimes bitter debate and "blame game". I cannot recall 4.2 to fix a bug in Abiword (not in Puppy), and I'm not going to repackage 2 releases and upload 8 isos for a bug that has not 1 but at least 3 workarounds. If one of the devs works out what library is causing the problem, I'll happily add the solution to the Patches and Updates thread.

I haven't yet seen a compelling reason for a point1 "bug fix" release. So far every problem has been repairable with one of the patches posted in the Patches and Updates thread. I'm sure this one will be too, in time. If you need them all in one neat package, RemaX is your answer.

In the meantime there is much left to be done for this release, including providing Pizzasgood and Caneri with the necessary stuff for the new Git development repository. I'd rather see the effort required go into making that all it can be for the next standard release of Puppy.

BTW, have you thought about K-Office? It's older, and doesn't support .docx at all, but it's way smaller than OOO, pretty darn stable and can be made to look very much like Word. Puppy 4.2 supports up to 20-odd sfs files, so one more won't hurt, will it?

Hope that clarifies my position
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tronkel
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#18 Post by tronkel »

Ecomoney wrote concerning ttuuxxx:
ignore requests to produce themes for disabled people
I have just as much concern for disabled people as yourself Ecomoney, but consider this - Ttuuxxx does not take his remit on Puppy development from you Ecomoney.

The remit for developers of Puppy 4.2 was to produce an updated version of Puppy that is in line with the design parameters for a normal basic Puppy. What are these design parameters?
1. Small
2. Fast
3. Usable for most of the user base.
4. Jam-packed with useful software.

No mention of any specialised disabled facilities. That can come in the form of an add-on if necessary.

No OS can be all things to all people, even disabled people.
WhoDo and Ttuuxxx have done an unbelievably good job in implementing this latest version of Puppy. MS Windows has come a cropper on this very issue of being all things to all people. If you need specialised stuff for disabled, you should chip in with some help on this especially since you have learned so much from your previous sojourn at University

I admit that testing and quality control in Puppy cannot compete with the likes of Debian say, but that's just the way it is. The trade-off here is that the the little Puppy has even more tricks in its head than Debian has.

Puppy does not exist just to be tailor-made to your requirements Economy. If it doesn't suit you, you have other alternatives open to you.
Ttuuxxx
there would have been no 4.2 without your sterling efforts, so please do not take these criticisms to heart. Same for WhoDo
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#19 Post by jakfish »

It's a strange paradox in the computer programming world that those who work for free, work the hardest of all.

On top of their countless hours of developing and testing, I feel very badly seeing them feeling so besieged. I hold them in only the highest esteem, and any problem that comes out of any release is my problem, not theirs. If it's solved, great--but I'm not owed its solution.

Jake

techtype
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#20 Post by techtype »

Ecomoney wrote: bla bla bla

Those that can do, those that can't -- criticize (in a rude and inappropriate manner)

Post your facts and leave it at that. You can start by going back and editing your posts.

disciple
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#21 Post by disciple »

For the record, the old Abiword is NOT a "just-works package"; at least in Puppy 4.x, and by the criteria expressed here.
It is pretty buggy, and I find it unusable simply because it usually doesn't display half the text in a document. I can usually see it when I select it, but that often crashes Abiword. This could be specific to Microsoft documents, or certain common fonts - I don't know :(
I don't remember it being like this in Puppy 2.x, but then I never used it much. It is a pity, because if Abiword wasn't so buggy in Puppy it would be my WP of choice... as it is I use OOo.
I guess I could always use it in Wine, but that seems wrong :)
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ttuuxxx
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#22 Post by ttuuxxx »

Here's Barry's version of Abiword 2.6.3 with 2.6.6 extensions and Templates, with spellcheck turned on
http://www.puppylinux.asia/tpp/ttuuxxx/ ... pdated.pet
Just install it and use it, Its the same as using 2.6.6 due to the fact it can now read/write .docx extensions.
case solved.
ttuuxxx

Ps its also in Puppies 4.2-v1
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 908#290908
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

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ecomoney
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#23 Post by ecomoney »

Puppy Mission Statement (by BarryK)

1. Puppy will easily install to USB, Zip or hard drive media
2. Booting from CD, Puppy will load totally into RAM so that the CD drive is then free for other purposes
3. Puppy will be extremely friendly for Linux newbies
4. Puppy will boot up and run extraordinarily fast
5. Puppy will have all the applications needed for daily use
6. Puppy will just work, no hassles
7. Puppy will breathe new life into old PCs
Five and six still need some work in that case, though number three has come on in leaps and bounds in the latest release.

Just to clarify, I asked for one of the themes to be higher contrast for those with impaired vision...a fairly common "disability" (ok I was stretching the point here), but it would have been nice for puppy to make at least a nod in this direction (considering it had quite a few themes already between jwm, icewm and gtk)

Personally, I dont use a word processor that much...but I know a lot of other people do. I can just about fix it, but Ive been using it nearly four years now. Most of what I learnt at Uni was theoretical, making sure that end users are properly consulted to their exact requirements, and a methodical approach to development and testing was implemented. Icewm wasnt around at the time (1996) but your absolutely right there is no reason I cant make a high contrast theme now, and I will.

I agree Whodo has done a very good job, and doing the best job always involves looking back at what could be done better.

Jack...if you think were beleaguered...you should see some of the places I work.
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ecomoney
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#24 Post by ecomoney »

Thank you for this at least Ttuxxx, tested with sample documents from here

http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/Sa ... t2007.aspx

At risk of sounding pedantic...would you also include a mime-type so .docx opens automatically with abiword when clicked on. Currently they open with xarchive.
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#25 Post by tronkel »

jakfish wrote:
It's a strange paradox in the computer programming world that those who work for free, work the hardest of all.
Yes indeed, the open-source world is a paradox - one I have never really understood. Entirely different animal from the normal model of producer/consumer. Seems to work very well though in practice.

It works most of the time even for people who have specialist needs - even for Ecomoney.

In order to produce the goods here, some contributors donate a lot of time and probably health status in order to produce the stuff.

Please make allowance for this. This applies to everyone here - not just to Ecomoney - who I accept is just trying to do his best for his end-users as well.
Last edited by tronkel on Thu 02 Apr 2009, 13:57, edited 1 time in total.
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#26 Post by ttuuxxx »

ecomoney wrote:Thank you for this at least Ttuxxx, tested with sample documents from here

http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/Sa ... t2007.aspx

At risk of sounding pedantic...would you also include a mime-type so .docx opens automatically with abiword when clicked on. Currently they open with xarchive.
Man your never happy, Open abiword and click file/open it works.
You can't set a mime to it yet, xarchiver looks at it as a .zip file, you would have to use the zip mime and have it open abiword, now thats a mess, I'll contact the developer since he's a nice guy and ask him how to update xarchiver.

A clever way you can do with .docx files is extract them in a folder using xarchiver, then right click open with 'defaultbrowser' /root/word/document.xml
then click in seamonkey save as html
then open the html file with seamonkey and boom you viewing a docx file in seamonkey perfectly, without abiword/OO etc, just seamonkey.
ttuuxxx
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

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ecomoney
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#27 Post by ecomoney »

It works most of the time even for people who have specialist needs - even for Ecomoney
Most of my clients think a mime-type is a subdivision of theatre with no words. They just want to click on it and it work, and let them get on with battling housing corporations/banks/lawyers without having to pay £235 for M$ office....a lot of people I know are in that situation at the moment. Letter writing is far from specialist computer use....its a daily necessity for many.

Thank you for clarifying about Mime types Ttuxxx...perhaps a more flexible system of assigning programs to files will be developed soon. Files matter more than programs to end-users. For now its just great to have docx support somehow and be able to give "linux newbs" some way of accessing modern literacy cheaply.
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evilmrb
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Oh dear!!

#28 Post by evilmrb »

I can't begin to say how much it saddens me to see my humble bug report degenerate into a slanging match simply because parties cannot see one another's point of view.
I am a Linux dabbler so I don't know much technical stuff. Trying to rebuild another version of Puppy myself would be a non-no. For me at least the Abiword issue would mean I couldn't / wouldn't use it. I think Puppy is an absolutely fantastic piece of software and I have done since I first tried it. Every time I get a new version I marvel at just how much it does, especially for its size. If anyone from Microsoft is reading this - watch and learn!!!
I can see the points on both sides and really there is no right or wrong here. It's abundantly clear that the developers work very hard to produce a great product and it's frustrating for users when a key bit doesn't work as well as it might. I learn about new releases from Distrowatch.com so I wouldn't know when releases were available for testing but I would be willing to help in that area from a user's perspective.
Please try to bear in mind that we are all on the same side really.

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Abiword problem in 4.2

#29 Post by cindy »

Now I have been criticized before and I have broad shoulders so do not mind. I am disgusted that anyone would have contempt for a person who does such a good job for people. Rob works so hard for puppy linux and does not make money at it. His prime concern is helping us ordinary people.
I am the person that he brought the young person to so she could print a letter. Have you NEVER been in trouble whodo ????
I have not made a comment on this forum for a long time because there are a few of you out there who seem to have no heart. More like a machine that just see figures and whatever it is that makes you tick. I have as an elderly lady enjoyed using puppy linux and in my SMALL way tried to promote it.
So PLEASE do not tell me I have not followed the correct protocol I am too old to listen, just fix what is wrong so that us ordinary people can use your system PLEASE.

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Re: Abiword problem in 4.2

#30 Post by WhoDo »

cindy wrote:Have you NEVER been in trouble whodo ????
Not really, not the way you mean, but I certainly have done my share of helping those who were! I don't wear that like a badge of honour and demand people respect what I do. I just do it when it needs doing! That's how I found Puppy in the first place ... rebuilding PC's to give away to those who really needed them and couldn't afford to pay. I understand Rob's passion for the people he helps. I feel the same way, but that passion needs to be mixed with a little respect and humility when things aren't exactly as expected.

If you and others belittled Rob's efforts, how long do you think he'd keep doing what he does for you?

I don't think Rob should put his avocation ahead of the rights and feelings of others, regardless of how laudible his objectives may be. I applaud you defending someone who has helped you and people you know. That's all I was doing when I reacted to Rob's unwarranted criticism. Heck, ttuuxxx had just got through finding a workaround to help out while he looked more deeply at the underlying problem and what did he get for the effort? "That's nowhere near good enough"! Phooey to that!

I get really annoyed when people cannot see beyond their own narrow viewpoint.
cindy wrote:So PLEASE do not tell me I have not followed the correct protocol I am too old to listen, just fix what is wrong so that us ordinary people can use your system PLEASE.
Have you ever heard the expression "looking a gift horse in the mouth"? I'm sure you have. It means disrespecting the gift and the giver by looking for faults in the gift or rejecting the gift because it isn't perfect! Puppy is a GIFT. You paid exactly ZERO for it! Telling those who have laboured so long to "just fix what is wrong so us ordinary people can use your system" is NOT mitigated by appending the word PLEASE as though it were a demand.

Sometimes I wonder why volunteers bother when you get the recipients of their labours looking that particular gift horse in the mouth and declaring the gift flawed! It's FREE for crying out loud! At least you could ask nicely if you'd like things organised a little differently. *sheesh*

Cindy I applaud your defense of your friend and helper. I also applaud your friend and helper for what he does. Please don't forget that it was people like ttuuxxx, and me, who made what Rob does possible in the first place, through our hard work with this distribution! I think we've earned just a modicum of respect for that too, don't you?

@evilmrb - I agree and I sincerely hope the mods look at locking this thread and giving the side issues a chance to crawl away and die.

Your report was properly made. The problem was recognised and has been fixed (see ttuuxxx's last post and the Patches & Updates thread for 4.2), at least to the point where it shouldn't be a problem any more in this release. Fin!
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#31 Post by trio »

More like only misunderstanding with "how to convey a message" to me....please, like whodo said, be nice in this forum, even when you're angry, after all, we're all doing voulenteer's work here. All Free..

Aaah, we've been here before eh whodo? (just like 4.2 RC's threads) :lol: and yes, FIN STOP PERIOD ETC

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tronkel
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#32 Post by tronkel »

Dear Cindy, you wrote:
His prime concern is helping us ordinary people
I for one do not disagree with this. GNU/Linux was specifically conceived to help "ordinary people" with whatever computing tasks they need to do - and at no cost to boot. Let's be in no doubt - this is a good thing.

But consider this:

In order to achieve this goal, basic Puppy Linux versions need to be built so that they can be used as bases for community editions plus any other required variants.

What WhoDo and Ttuuxxx have made here is not a Community Edition but a Base Edition. WhoDo and Ttuuxxx are VERY good at what they do and should be left alone to get on with it without criticism.

I do understand though that you might have confused Base Editions with Community Editions. This is an easy mistake to make.

Best regards

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#33 Post by ecomoney »

You are right Trio, angry posts, belittling peoples (free) contributions and casting accusations are no way of advancing what is a very worthy and important project for many, free or not. Ive apologised to those who have I have unintentially offended (whodo) who are generally not guilty of the same. No one should be "beyond criticism", me included.

Im want to re-iterate again that my "not nearly good enough" comment was made - from the point of view of the people "linux newbs" that this distro is aimed at - soley at Ttuxxxs first suggested workaround for the Abiword bug, not for his final fix for the problem, or the 4.2 release, or Puppy Linux as a whole.

I am wanting to turn this around to be something positive too. Whodo Im sure in the future - should my comments have not put you off managing another release - you will take the steps needed to ensure a bug of this magnitude (to end users) will not creep in again.
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dawnsboy

#34 Post by dawnsboy »

I have worked with Abiword since the 1.x series on various platforms (Slackware, Fedora, Debian based, Windows 98 through Vista, Vector Linux, Puppy Linux, etc). This word processor has matured nicely over the years making it a very useful application. My sister uses a version in Win 98SE on her aging laptop. She creates term papers, etc in Abiword and saves them as Word documents on a disk so that she can open and edit or print them from MS Word on another computer as needed. I have been able to create fairly complex documents in Abiword and have successfully exported them to Word format. I have been far less successful with importing documents created in MS Word.

Generally letters, term papers and similar documents with and without images import fairly well (some are flawlessly rendered). Complex documents created in MS Word in my experience tend not to render particularly well in Abiword. I have a resume that was created using a MS Word resume template (2 column table) that can easily and accurately be imported into Open Office. This document can be imported into Abiword but there are issues. While the table structure is intact Abiword has difficulty placing headings in their proper positions. It tends to word wrap headings and sub-headings that fit easily on one line in MS Word or Open Office. It also adds rows to the table and breaks across pages in odd places. In my experience this is typical of Abiword which has always been a fast, lightweight word processor that does meet the criteria for the Puppy Linux mission statement (especially for documents created in Abiword and sent to printer or exported as Word Documents). However it has always been necessary for me to import more complex documents in Open Office when available to me; if not then Google Docs or Zoho Office (zoho.com).

The abilities, features, benefits, limitations or bugs present in Abiword are generally the responsibility of the developers at Abisource. In regard to garbled fonts I wish to point out that I installed a package called fonts.pet that I found here on the forum. This changed how fonts are rendered globally on my system. I did not attempt to use Abiword 2.66 until the font package had been installed. This is something I have done with other Puppy 4.x setups.

Having said that I have had no problem whatever with Abiword 2.66 as used otherwise out of the box. I have been able to download Word documents and render them in Abiword with the anticipated results.

It has been my experience when identifying a problem that a search for a solution most often yields quick results. Sharing the problem and the solution (when possible) or asking for help within the community will alert developers to the problem and it will be addressed. I have never worked with a distro of any kind that did not have post release issues that required additional work of some kind on the part of the developers. It is a part of life. Development of an operating system is a complex, often tedious task.

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Abiword problem in 4.2

#35 Post by cindy »

Thanks for your reply, not certain what to make of it ???

As I said I have broad shoulders.

I was not just sticking up for a friend. I was saying what I thought after reading your remarks. As to looking a gift horse in the mouth, I think that is an insulting thing to say. Anyway I will not bore you with anything else as I have more pleasant things to do. :D

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