Re: [Fsfe-uk] AbiWord

[Chris Croughton]

On Wed, Mar 09, 2005 at 06:37:34PM +0000, John Seago wrote:

> I have used AbiWord up to, now to read and print Microsoft Word documents, 
> I, going by its home page, took it that having translated FROM Microsoft 
> Word, it would do the reverse, see the following from its home page: 
> 
> "What Makes AbiWord Different?
> 
> AbiWord is unique among word processors in its drive to become a fully 
> cross-platform word processor.

OpenOffice.org?  Available on at least Linux, Solaris, MacOS/X
and MS Windows 98 and later.

> Our source code is carefully written so 
> that AbiWord will run on virtually any operating system with a minimum of 
> time spent on porting. This combined with our support for 
> internationalization (the ability to run AbiWord in many languages) gives 
> AbiWord a massive potential user-base.

OpenOffice.org, again?  More internationalisation than MS WordA  Plus
the internal format of OpenOffice.org is an open standard..

> Currently we run on most UNIX systems, Windows 95 and later, QNX Neutrino 
> 6.2. We also have a MacOS X native port in the way (you can still use the 
> UNIX version on MacOS X if you want). There used to be a BeOS port, but 
> that version has been gone unmaitained for too long to consider it as 
> still alive; we dreamt that it was any different, so if you want to help, 
> feel free to contact us."
> 
> Obviously it does not.

Does not what?  It presumably does run on those platforms (I haven't
tried it, but they'd be silly to say that it does if it doesn't).

> My using it with the intention that it should do so 
> is a mattter of my ignorance of its workings particularly as the above 
> paragraph states "Windows 95 and later".

Presumably it does run on Windows 95 and later.  So do many things which
don't use portable and standard formats.  You seem to be confusing
operating systems with file formats (something you did in the first
message in this thread, when you said "their use of an operating system
that cannot open AbiWord attachments"), the two are in no way connected.

> To refer to those who are 
> ignorant of a given matter, as stupid, given the richness and flexibility 
> of the English language is not only lazy but, insulting, and in the case 
> where it was applied to me, I consider it deliberately so. I doubt that 
> Chris Croughton, would call me stupid were we face to face, (here I am 
> assuming a normal level of good manners), and will happily accept an 
> apology. 

I did not call /you/ stupid, I said that the behaviour was stupid.  Do
you understand the difference?  I said "Sending important information in
some format specific to a particular program is, quite frankly, stupid."
That's the behaviour, not the person.  Do you claim to never do stupid
things?  Do you claim to be perfect?  I certainly don't.  I put sugar on
my egg at breakfast the other day, that was a stupid thing to do, it
doesn't make me stupid.  I've known university professors who did really
stupid things, in spite of being geniouses in their field, they are not
stupid but they, like everyone, do stupid things on occasion.

In that there was a misunderstanding, I apologise for that.  In that I
did not know that your rant was based partly on your physical problems,
I apologise for upsetting you.

> As is noted above it is stated that AbiWord, and I took it, its documents, 
> could be used by "Windows 95 and later", hence my request as to who to 
> complain to, that a governmental department could not read a document that 
> can read "Windows" documents.

Again you confuse an operating system, Windows, with a word processor,
MS Word.  Do you really not know the difference?  Did you also believe
that there was some "Linux document" format?

> For  Alex Young  and Chris  Croughton to adopt a rebarbative tone when 
> replying,

Well, let's see who started the tone.  You were angry that the Health
Authority did not accept a non-standard document format, and complained
that their "operating system" wouldn't open your file, when in fact they
had very reasonably requested that you resend it (they probably didn't
know whether it was a file in a strange format or had been corrupted, I
doubt that they are geek enough to try to analyse it, their system just
said "file cannot be opened" or something similar).

Complaining to them that your non-standard format isn't recognised by
their system does nothing to improve their opinion of Free Software.
Indeed, it is likely to harm it, many people already think all
supporters of Free Software are cranks, and someone insisteing that
because they are able to translate Welsh they should recognise every
possible file format will confirm it to them.

Complaining to people on a Free Software mailing list that the Health
Authority doesn't accept non-standard formats for documents doesn't cut
much ice either.  Especially since they /do/ accept the most common
portable format, plain text (I've come across a number of places which
insist on MS Word format).

> whilst others took the trouble to explain why I was wrong in my 
> assumptions,

Note that by the time I replied to you others had already explained why your
assumptions were wrong, and you had gone on to rant about them
understanding Urdu and Welsh but not your document.  Since your
assumptions had already been corrected by that time, I answered your
rant with reasons why the rant was incorrect (they are required by law
to handle messages in Cymraeg and other languages, but no law can insist
that they be able to handle all possible computer formats).  There was,
by that time, no point in repeating the corrections to your assumptions
about how portable Abiword's format was.

Indeed, I did correct your assumption that you would have to stop using
Abiword:

> You can still use it, as long as you use an open format for
> communication.

And further on:

> Plain text, HTML, possibly RTF and PDF, are about the
> only ones for which there is near-universal support (MSWord DOC on  
> Windows platforms, but not all of those and fewer Mac ones).

Is that not useful and helpful?  Note that Abiword will, according to
the information on their site, export in plain text, HTTML and RTF among
others (not MS Word format, though).

Chris C