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Poll: Should Aleksandyr start working on print support?
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Should Aleksandyr start working on print support?

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aleksandyr is offline aleksandyr
2007-01-09 , 17:10
Posts: 474 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on Jan 2006
#1
I've seen a bit of noise recently about this.

There's no reason AbiWord shouldn't be able to print, other than the lack of CUPS/lpr/other tools of the sort.

I'm not promising print support in Opera, but I don't see why printing to networked printers would be terribly difficult (yet!)

Please post what, specifically, you would like to see for print support, and I will see what I can do.

Note that all of this will occur on the 770 for now, since I have no 800 to test with.
 
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Karel Jansens is offline Karel Jansens
2007-01-09 , 19:05
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#2
I'm actually in agony over this one: On the one hand I'd like to have printing on my NokiLLO so much that it actually hurts; on the other I'm equally pining for a (finally?) finished and polished Abiword port.

(I did have printing (of some sort) with Abiword on ITOS2005: it involved having Abiword installed on a USB stick and a computer with a printer and email access. I used it successfully on several occasions: sending my Abiword files to my own Gmail account, inserting the Abiword stick in the "host" computer and printing from there.)

My question is this: If I answer "yes", how much longer will we have to wait for a final port of Abiword?
 
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jayholler is offline jayholler
2007-01-09 , 19:48
Posts: 128 | Thanked: 4 times | Joined on Feb 2006 @ Philadelphia, PA
#3
It would be nice, but I think there would be too many different apps to try and print from (abiword, maemopad, xournal, pdf reader, email, web etc), how could they be integrted?
 
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Texrat is offline Texrat
2007-01-09 , 19:50
Posts: 11,700 | Thanked: 10,045 times | Joined on Jun 2006 @ North Texas, USA
#4
Why would they need to be integrated? Use an independent driver model, publish the specs and let other developers add support to their individual apps.
 
TA-t3 is offline TA-t3
2007-01-09 , 20:22
Posts: 3,841 | Thanked: 1,079 times | Joined on Nov 2006
#5
It would be nice, but I think there would be too many different apps to try and print from (abiword, maemopad, xournal, pdf reader, email, web etc), how could they be integrted?
Er, what? That's not how it works in the Unix model, which is the issue here. To get printing support from _any_ application should simply be a question of getting cups/lpr ported and installed, as has already been mentioned by another poster. The applications simply have to send a file (postscript of pdf, typically) to the printer socket (or even just exec'ing the lpr app with a temp file, for a quick hack). Seen from the application point of view this is extremely simple when compared to the way it is (or used to be, at least) in typical Windows applications. The applications that don't have ps or pdf support integrated (e.g. email, notepad stuff) would need to add that, although it's also possible to just print raw files, if your network printer supports it.
 
aleksandyr is offline aleksandyr
2007-01-09 , 20:29
Posts: 474 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on Jan 2006
#6
Originally Posted by Karel Jansens View Post
My question is this: If I answer "yes", how much longer will we have to wait for a final port of Abiword?
Abiword 2.4.6 is currently in my scratchbox and will be packaged and released soonish. I intend to polish it up abit and make it app-installer-compatible, for one, but it's quite a bit faster than my last release. Functionality is still heavily impaired.

TA-t3 describes the approach I'm going to take --- get CUPS working, and the rest will follow.

As far as a fully hildonized Abiword? I'd rather write my own word processor. I intend to work on it a bit more, but there is a simply mind-boggling amount of work required to get it to work at all, let alone work meaningfully. Hildon differences mean significant port work every time a new feature is added, and I don't personally use Abiword, nor am I a member of the Abiword team, nor am I paid to do this (well, I made this post through the company network) so my thoughts are not likely to change.
 
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Karel Jansens is offline Karel Jansens
2007-01-09 , 21:14
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#7
Originally Posted by aleksandyr View Post
Abiword 2.4.6 is currently in my scratchbox and will be packaged and released soonish. I intend to polish it up abit and make it app-installer-compatible, for one, but it's quite a bit faster than my last release. Functionality is still heavily impaired.

TA-t3 describes the approach I'm going to take --- get CUPS working, and the rest will follow.

As far as a fully hildonized Abiword? I'd rather write my own word processor. I intend to work on it a bit more, but there is a simply mind-boggling amount of work required to get it to work at all, let alone work meaningfully. Hildon differences mean significant port work every time a new feature is added, and I don't personally use Abiword, nor am I a member of the Abiword team, nor am I paid to do this (well, I made this post through the company network) so my thoughts are not likely to change.
I don't really care about hildonisation, it's mostly eye-candy anyway. I just want a decent writer's editor that works, and apparently Abiword is the closest I'll get to it on the 770.

Unless you people want me to fire up my Newtons again and write everything in Notes? I'll do it, you know. I really will...
 
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Karel Jansens is offline Karel Jansens
2007-01-09 , 21:16
Posts: 3,220 | Thanked: 326 times | Joined on Oct 2005 @ "Almost there!" (Monte Christo, Count of)
#8
Oh, PS: Thanks a zillion times for your work on Abiword, Aleksandyr.
 
aleksandyr is offline aleksandyr
2007-01-09 , 22:10
Posts: 474 | Thanked: 30 times | Joined on Jan 2006
#9
Originally Posted by Karel Jansens View Post
Oh, PS: Thanks a zillion times for your work on Abiword, Aleksandyr.
The only reason I'm still working on Abiword is because of messages like yours: it's nice to know I'm working on something that people use!

I'd like to draw up a list of Abiword shortcomings at some point, beyond the ones I know of:

1) It looks ugly --- this can be resolved with some hildon gui work, nothing epic.
2) It doesn't read word files --- this SHOULD be resolvable and is probably a matter of something broken or not enabled during the build process.
3) Lots of things crash when you click on them --- most of these errors seem to come from the partial hildonization --- attempting to cast a hildon window down to a GTK window doesn't work, for example, which is why print preview crashes.
4) Doesn't print --- see CUPS
 
klohmann is offline klohmann
2007-01-10 , 00:03
Posts: 82 | Thanked: 1 time | Joined on Apr 2006
#10
Aleksandyr:

Since you asked (and I really do appreciate your efforts on this - a real word processor on the 770 is critical for me), my list (in order of importance to me):

1. Ability to read and write .doc files (unfortunately, the world runs on them)
2. Outline support with the thumboard
3. Spell Checking
4. Printing (and since you didn't really ask, can I print in gnumeric too. . .(!))
4. Pretty it up (e.g. launch from menu, etc.)

That's about it -- and seriously, thanks for your work on this!!! K.
 
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