From: Jesper Skov (jskov@zoftcorp.dk)
Date: Sun May 19 2002 - 04:57:11 EDT
Hub'll probably approve the copy Rebecca sent directly when he gets
online next time. But I figured people may be interested in the reply,
so here's a forward.
Jesper
attached mail follows:
Thank you very much, Jesper. I really appreciate your kind response.
I certainly wouldn't review ABIWord in a day -- Rob said to review it on Windows, and just mention whether it works in Linux or not. Obviously, 9x works on Red Hat 7.3, and I'll fudge with the 1.x stuff this evening, but I can already see from 9x that ABIWord is Linux friendly. My ENTIRE review is limited to 250 words -- which gives little room for Linux chat. I'm primarily a Windows reviewer, and didn't want to try compiling for Mandrake 8, my distro of choice, so I had to wait for Red Hat to get here and so on. I just needed to get a feel for how the problems I encountered fit into the grand scheme of things for Linux regulars. I'm not unaware, from reviewing a few Linux products in the past, that these kinds of things come up. You've put the .9x, 1x Red Hat RPM stuff in perspective. As for missing required files, I've seen that happen with a big company doing a Linux version of its program, though I can't imagine many people like it.
Thank you again for helping make the pieces fit. I like it when at least some jagged pieces shrink and fall through the big picture. It's a process that happens with every review to some degree but, most especially, with the extremely short ones. You can't take 250 words to talk about problems that aren't that big when all you've *got* are 250 words to say what the product does and how it did in Windows, then mention whether it works in Linux. You've been a great help.
--Rebecca
At 11:36 PM 5/18/02, Jesper Skov said:
>On Sun, 2002-05-19 at 07:00, Rebecca Rohan wrote:
> >
> > Hi -- sorry for bothering you, but I'm writing a review of ABIWord for The Washington Post (due Monday!!!) and can't find a help- or PR contact at the site.
> > These are the questions I need answered by someone authorized to speak on the company's behalf, please:
>
>That's because AbiWord is not developed by a company but by an open
>community. We don't have anyone paid to provide help to users. We do it
>in our spare time.
>
>The best way to get answered questions would normally be to mail to the
>user mailing list - or since you're in short time, the developer list,
>which I'm copying. I'm answering your questions the best I can, but
>someone else may want to add details.
>
>Take my answers as a help, not as an official reply from "someone
>authorized to speak" on the community's behalf :)
>
> > 1. I got Red Hat 7.3 from Red Hat just to look at ABIWord for this review. Red Hat 7.3 includes ABIWord 9x, and it tells me that 9x is newer than the 1.x version I just downloaded from the ABIWord site. How can that be? Is there anything wrong with the 9x version?
>
>It's an RPM packaging problem. It's a known problem, and it has a simple
>workaround:
>
>When you log in as root, instead of updating:
>
> # rpm -U abiword....
>
>first uninstall the old version:
>
> # rpm -e abiword
>
>and then install the new one:
>
> # rpm -i abiword...
>
> > 2. When I try to install ABIWord 1.x on Red Hat 7.3, Red Hat tells me I need abi-fonts and libgal.so.7, or I could be in a heap of trouble. I know where to find those files, but -- why doesn't the download come with them?
>
>The fonts come in a separate package. I guess nothing would prevent us
>for shipping the two packages as a single package, except it's normal in
>Linux distributions to package functional elements separately. You'll
>see the same with X and its fonts.
>
>It's probably standard procedure to reduce download size and amount of
>harddisk space necessary for an installation - which arguably doesn't
>make as much sense for our all-fonts-in-one package (compared to the
>various separate font packages for different language regions in X). But
>that's the way we've done it.
>
>As for GAL, it's a bit more problematic; it's a third party package,
>which has changed a lot over the time. Whoever builds the RPM package,
>sets the standard for which GAL version is necessary, since the
>resulting AbiWord RPM package will require whichever version of GAL was
>installed on the builders machine.
>
>I believe our RPM package was built by Rui Miguel Silva Seabra on a
>standard Red Hat Linux 7.2 machine. So it should install without fuzz on
>RHL 7.2.
>
>On newer or older versions of Red Hat Linux, or on other distributions,
>some other version of GAL may be present, causing RPM to complain. It's
>a minefield, and there's little we can do about it, as a small
>community. We don't have the resources to build packages for each and
>every distribution (and version thereof), nor to test that it installs
>on these. What we provide are RPMs that should install on a pristine Red
>Hat Linux 7.2 installation.
>
>However, there are workarounds. We normally advise people to subscribe
>to Ximian's service, and get AbiWord and all its dependencies from
>there. That's the best option for sure. And they usually update their
>version of AbiWord a few days after we make a new release.
>
>Alternatively, people can download the version 7 gal package from the
>net or from whichever distribution provider they use.
>
>Finally, if the machine already has another version of GAL installed
>(which it would on a normal GNOME installation) is to install AbiWord
>with the extra --nodeps argument to rpm, making it ignore the
>dependency. Obviously, this *may* cause problems if the version of GAL
>installed does not provide the functionality needed by AbiWord.
>
>
>
>FWIW this problem has been the cause of much heated debate. I'm sure we
>should be able to make installing AbiWord a smother ride, and we'll try
>to address the libgal problem in particular.
>
>On the other hand, we're only a few people working on the project, and
>the project *is* about making a darn good word processor. It's not about
>providing dependency libraries for all the various linux distributions
>in all their different packaging formats. We simply don't have the
>manpower.
>
>I'm sure there are people hoping that it might be possible to create a
>commercial company around AbiWord. This company would among other things
>see to that the installation was a smooth process, on all the potential
>user platforms. But that service would come at a price.
>
> >
> > Please get my questions to someone authorized to answer them as soon as possible. My story is due Monday. I will turn it in with the information I found, but usually have a day or so to make changes while the editor works it over.
>
>Again, the answers are no more authorized than anything else you might
>get for free from a volunteer. An official answer would have to come
>from our installer team, and trust me, they would have the
>authorization. But we don't have such a team. So there :)
>
>I hope you'll find AbiWord to be a nice program - and I sincerely hope
>you'd consider using it for more than a single day before reviewing it.
>I know you're on a deadline, but it'd be good of you to use it for a
>while and revisit the issue in a later article. Make a point of it in
>the first article.
>
>Take this a humble request from someone who spent way more than a day
>developing this nice Open Source and free word processing program, and
>who would like to see it judged by all its merrits, not its installation
>process (which is known to be problematic on Linux - see the Windows
>version for a Smooth Ride Experience(tm)) and a casual poke around
>alone.
>
>Cheers,
>Jesper
--Rebecca Rohan rrohan@bitcave.com www.bitcave.com
. Currently, IT*inerant writer for: .
. ZDNet, Washington Post, DevX, and Books 24 x 7 .
. Author, _Building Better Web Pages_ *IT = Information Tech .
. BACKUP E-MAIL ADDRESS -- USE IF MAIN BOUNCES: rebrohan@attbi.com .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sun May 19 2002 - 05:01:04 EDT