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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

Abiword won't work with 4-bit color depth.  The error message I got said 
to report this as a bug.  I had to register and wait for a password and 
then login to file my bug report.  Today I received an acknowledgment and 
then three more emails in which various people working on abiword 
reclassifed this from status 'blocker' to 'enhancement' (feature) to 
'normal'.

There was also some reclassification of something from 'unknown/other' to 
'GTK-frontend'.  Maybe GTK won't work in 4-bit color?  What is GTK anyway?
I can post these emails if anyone wants.

I reported that Xvesa won't do 8-bit color, that we were trying to use 
Abiword with BL3 and Xvesa (where it works in 12MB RAM, at least for a 
very short file, rather than the 'required 16M' - maybe this is because 
Xvesa uses less RAM than X, and icewm also uses less than a desktop?), and 
that some of our users' computers cannot do 15-bit or higher color so that 
we therefore needed 1-bit or 4-bit color, and could they please add that 
capability.

Opera 6 in 1-bit color will not display any images at all.  The author of 
Antiword explained that it is difficult to convert color to mono.  So I 
suggested that they make Abiword work in fewer colors, without images.

I don't think we need icons or clip art to type words.

Flwriter would not work in 4-bit color either, because he did not bother 
to include it.  Flwriter has a single author, abiword a team, so maybe 
someone will find the time to work on this.

James reported that Abiword runs very slowly on 20 page documents.  A 
search through the bug reports (which does not require registering and 
logging in) found several other reports of things going slowly, 
flickering, or disappearing.  Flwriter had a similar problem until he 
fixed one bug (but I think it may have occurred only at 4-bit color).
Has anyone else had problems with 20 page or larger documents in Abiword?

The author of antiword interpreted my strace readv error message for the 
seg fault in Realplayer.  Either the program is trying to make too many 
buffers or they are too large (for my setup).  Maybe I should try adding 
more physical RAM but I have 128MB and it calls for 32MB.  Perhaps the 
linux version really needs more and they should not have blindly copied 
over the system requirements from the Windows version.  We were just given 
four 64MB DIMMs so all I need is a computer with 3 DIMM slots instead of 
two.  We were also given four 64MB SIMMs, which I had never seen before, 
and two 32MB SIMMs.  THe computer where RP works has 3x64MB.  It is also 
our fastest but the error message was about running out of buffer space 
not speed.

Antiword 0.36 is in progress.  I will compile it for BL3 eventually.  I 
have found that it can handle some WORD file that catdoc could not, and 
apparently Abiword is not going to work on all computers because of video, 
even apart from needing more disk space.

I was also told that the reason the laser printer started working in 
Windows for graphics is that we plugged and unplugged all our printer 
cables in it and this wore off enough corrosion that it was getting a 
stronger signal.  I am guessing that the two computers which sometimes 
would not boot linux and now always do burnt off their corrosion due to 
heating up in use.  Maybe the broken fan which gave us a Fur Elise 
concert even helped this somehow?

Anyone want to guess why as soon as the laser printer started to behave, 
the dot-matrix printer plugged into the same comport is now spouting 40 
column garbage instead of text?  Is this just a coincidence?  I have never 
seen this happen before.  Just trying to print DOS with a text editor that 
has always worked before.  Maybe the printer electronics suddenly failed?
I was going to print out the instructions for upgrading cpu speed.

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004, sindi keesan wrote:

> For those of us with old laptops that do 256 colors max, will Abiword be 
> usable, at least, in the mismatched colors of 8-bit Xvesa?  Assuming you 
> don't incorporate images, just text, and don't care what color the text is. 
> (Red turned into blue for me in freecell).