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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] Abiword
  • Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 18:10:20 +0000 (UTC)

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).





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