Baslinux mailing list

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

I got Abiword working (Steven, could you change 'issue' for the latest 
version of BL3 to read not BL3.3 but BL3.32 so it will be more clear?)
and tested it out.  I downloaded icewm.tgz again and the md5sum does not 
match what is posted (it does match what I already had).  So probably I 
had the wrong version of bl3.3 and the right version of icewm.  (In the 
meantime my BL3 installation stopped booting with an error about
IP Protocols:  ICMP, UDP, TCP, which happened on this same ASUS computer 
where BL2 had this problem and had to be reinstalled, this being right 
after I was testing out Xvesa to make sure it did not cause a crash on a 
single-monitor system - possibly not related but I went back to the old 
Xvesa just in case).

Abiword and tables:

1.  It does NOT import WP5 - it imports WP6-9 (not clear if this is for 
Windows or also DOS) so I cannot type up something in WP5 and then add 
extra formatting (columns or tables).  It imports T602 (Czech 
wordprocessor format).

2.  I imported an Albanian WORD for Windows document and it had some 
problems.  One long line wrapped (I can live with that).  It automatically 
used Latin2 but with errors.  It made a page with three sections into 
THREE PAGES (header, middle part with columns done correctly, footer).
The header on the first page had the wrong characters for the extended 
ascii, that on the second page was wrong for the first half and then right 
for the second half.  The first footer was good then bad, the second 
footer was good.  I could read it anyway, with some imagination, but I 
certainly would not try to edit this sort of mess so I think I am still 
stuck with Win98 and the WORD viewer.

3.  There are no help files in Steven's small version and I found a way to 
make columns but not tables (with lines around them).  James, did you make 
columns or tables?  I need to translate things with tables and preserve 
the format once in a while.

4.  The keyboard navigation is not working well.  Alt-o gets me a menu but 
c won't get me columns.  Various other places I had to use the mouse, but 
sometimes I could arrow down and Enter.  I could not do a lot of things 
without a mouse (such as turn off auto spell-checking button, since 
spell-checking is not going to work in Albanian).  But Ctrl-B and Ctrl-U 
work for bold and underline (they are not in the menus).

So it is somewhat better at formatting than antiword in some ways, but 
antiword put the first page on one page not three (though it made three 
columns into one).

You can set the language to Russian (Russia) but not Russian anyplace 
else, on the analogy of Spanish (Mexico) or (Spain).  You cannot set it to 
Albanian or Macedonian (which I translate) though you can read the 
Albanian at least (Latin2 e umlaut).  To read Russian presumably I would 
need to add Cyrillic fonts somehow, using the SW40 cyrillic fonts for X. 
How? 8859-5 also has Macedonian, koi8-r does not.

On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, James Miller wrote:

> On Wed, 2 Feb 2005, sindi keesan wrote:
>
> > Does anyone know if the BL3 abiword imports WORD and WP51/DOS tables
> > properly?

Table yes, WP5 no.

> My experiences with tables using Abiword may not be relevant. In any case,
> they do not have to do with importing any documents made using Word that
> contain tables. But here is what I know about table handling in general by
> open source word processors, and some incidental information on it
> concerning Word. One major problem with the main open source word
> processor (OpenOffice) is that it will not allow table columns/rows to
> span pages. Any column or row that extends beyond the page limit simply
> gets unceremoniously cut off at the bottom of the page, and that's it
> (this is fixed in the OpenOffice 2 branch, btw--due out later this
> spring).  Trying to insert a 15-page table of this sort into a document
> results in a document of one page with a truncated table. People at the
> OpenOffice forum were regularly complaining about it butchering tables of
> this sort created using Word. Since I was looking for exactly this sort of
> functionality (page-spanning table-columns) for a certain task, I decided
> to try Abiword to create such a table. I found that Abiword was capable of
> creating my 10-page 2-column 1-row table. I saved the document as a Word
> file as well, though I found that I was able to work on it only in the
> native Abiword format due to the program's sapping my system's resources
> (1Ghz Celeron, 512MB RAM) when trying to open and work with the resulting
> .doc file. The system handled the document in native Abiword format
> slightly better, but not much. I said earlier onlist that I thought
> Abiword was still pretty buggy for this reason. I conclude from this that,
> for smaller tables in Word format, Abiword may well work for you. Sorry I
> can't be more definite.
>
> James
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org