Re: ANNOUNCE - Spatial AbiWord

This important announcement should be distributed as widely as possible.
Particularly as we've we've generous funding from the the gentoo
distribution drive this project to rapid completion.

Martin

>
> Announcing Spatial AbiWord
>
> Spatial AbiWord (tm) is a sister project (not to say a fork) of the
> successful AbiWord (tm) Word Processor. While AbiWord's slogan is
> "Word Processing for Everyone", Spatial AbiWord's slogan will be "Easy
> Word Processing for Everyone on GNOME". Spatial AbiWord will target
> Gtk/GNOME only.
>
> While AbiWord itself is a very successful project its cross platform
> nature of AbiWord sometimes limits the possibilities of desktop
> integration, a port targeting Gtk/GNOME only does not have to make
> such compromises.
>
> Spatial AbiWord is based on the current CVS HEAD source code of
> AbiWord and includes includes the following extra features:
> + Removal of all bloat, including all the functionality that should be
> handeled by the desktop environment or file manager.
> + No file selectors at all for a spatial user interface, therefore no
> "Open", "Save As" or similar menus and toolbar items.
> + Create new documents by right-clicking in nautilus.
> + Insert images by dragging them into the document.
> + Rename documents using the file manager instead of "Save As".
> + No multi document interface.
> + The "File" menu will be further renamed to "Document" and all
> references to other documents like "Recent Documents" will be removed.
> + No standard toolbar, only the most important formatting tools.
> + Standards complicance through OpenDocument/SXW as default file format.
> + Removed "Help" menu, to make Spatial AbiWord feel really integrated
> with the desktop, rather than a standalone application.
>
> The Spatial AbiWord project will do its best to talk to usability
> experts, GNOME centric linux distributions, developers and users to
> gain momentum and be able to offer a streamlined experience. We are
> actively seeking collaboration with people like Eugenia Loli-Queru,
> Havoc Pennington and others in order to create a next generation word
> processing experience. Maybe we can even get itput about performance
> issues from Eugenia Loli-Queru's husband, who is an operating system
> engineer.
>
> In order to demonstrate the unity between AbiWord and Spatial AbiWord
> the Spatial AbiWord discussions will take place on AbiWord's mailing
> lists. The Spatial AbiWord project would like to thank Dom Lachowicz,
> AbiWord's head maintainer for the permission to do so. Furthermore the
> possibility of receiving user feedback from blogs will be evaluated
> because users often don't like to file their issues in bugzilla and
> therefore provide valuable information in blog comments [1].
>
> The Spatial AbiWord source code is already available from AbiWord's
> CVS server. Interested people are invited to check out the
> JMM-DOUBLEGRAPHICS branch. Tarball snapshots will be released early
> next week. The Spatial AbiWord project will also provide Gentoo
> ebuilds in the future, as this is the best linux distribution out
> there and everybody should be using it.
>
> [1]
> http://www.figuiere.net/hub/blog/?2005/01/13/53-abiword-vs-iwork-part-1#c113
>
> On behalf of the Spatial AbiWord Project,
> - Robert Staudinger
>
Received on Fri Apr 1 13:32:03 2005