Re: My final post

     I do not often write to this list and it is normally my policy to Not
Feed the Trolls, but in this particular case I will make an exception.

sxxx@o2.pl wrote:
> Hi guys, this is my last posting here. I'll try to make this one as
> clear as I can by putting all the comments in separate points. But
> first, a word of explanation: My first post on this mailing list may
> indeed sound puerile, but I wrote it under the impression of
> OpenOffice Writer and it's great possibilities in comparison with
> Abiword, which I used to use. The post wasn't intended to be aggressive.
>

    The post was obviously intended to be a troll. There is no valid reason
to post a message attacking abiword and praising openoffice to this list. It
was an invasive, pointless act of aggression. In short, it was a troll. You
were clearly just trying to see what you could stir up. My kudos to this list
for not falling for your flame bait.

> 1. "If you really wanted to use AbiWord, our import and export is
> quite functional - it would not be impossible to do the majority of
> the work in AbiWord then export to RTF, the de-facto standard for WP
> document interchange, which OpenOffice.org should be able to read."
> - Ryan Pavlik
>
> You must admit that's not a very comfortable way, and makes Abiword
> dependent on the other word processors. I'm sure everyone would
> rather like to do all the writing, formatting and printing in one
> single application, and then successfully export the file as, say,
> PDF. This is a great advantage of OOo Writer over Abiword.
>

    You must admit that he has given a valid and reasonable response to your
vague criticisms. If you will note the first phrase in the first sentence you
quoted from Mr. Pavlik, "If you really wanted to use AbiWord", you would note
that he was addressing your imaginary desire to use AbiWord "if only it had
THESE features done perfectly!" Your failure to respond to his kind
suggestion simply points out your lack of interest in using AbiWord, further
exposing your nature as a troll,

     As for PDF, why, just look at this. I click on File -> Save as -> Save
file as type: and there it is... PDF. Far more comfortable then having OO's
bloat wasting so much memory and CPU with things I do not even use. Kind of
ridiculous to load a spread sheet application when I want to work on a novel,
isn't it? I bet that's why it runs so slow and crashes so often for me.

> 2. There's one bug in Abiword HTML export I can recall right now. No
> matter there are one or two consecutive line breaks in the original
> document, Abiword HTML export makes it two (or at least that's how
> it looks). I've noticed more bugs but can't remember now, so you
> will have to play with it yourselves.
>

     You can 'recall' it, but you didn't 'report' it? That's remarkably
irresponsible of you. You are supposed to contribute to the projects you use
by helping them find the bugs and other issues they need to address. Can you
provide SPECIFIC examples? Sample files in RTF that invoke this bug when
exported to HTML? If so, again, why haven't you reported it and DONE YOUR PART?

     I've never encountered this bug, then again... I actually write my HTML
by hand when it's that critical it be just right because, you see, that's how
it's meant to be done. AbiWord is a WORD PROCESSOR, not an HTML EDITOR. Is
this concept difficult for you? I'll explain; A WORD PROCESSOR is designed to
help you write, that is, to process WORDS. an HTML EDITOR is design to create
web pages, that is, to edit HTML. See the difference?

     Now let me introduce you to a couple of other programs... Pico, VI,
Notepad, all of these are what's called text editors. If you need precise
control over your web pages... which, again, web pages are not meant to be
controlled precisely, learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript then use these text
editors to write it. It's a poor worker who blames his tools, as the old
adage goes.

> 3. Did you try to put a table into the header? In Abiword it doesn't
> seem to work right (the program leaves one empty line under the
> table). I needed this to make page counter aligned to the
> left/right, and chapter name to the center, cause this is probably
> the best way to do it.
>

    Actually the best way to do it is center the title in the header and put
the page numbers in the footer, aligned to the outer edge. Abiword lets you
do that very easily and even automatically updates the page numbers for you.
To do it your way, is still easy.

(clicky) Insert -> Header
(clicky) Table -> Insert Table
   Number of Columns :3
   Number of Rows :1

(clicky) Center Alignment
(typing in the center column in table header) This is My Title.
Hmm look at that, aligned to the center...

(clicky left or right columns)
(clicky left or right alignment)
(clicky) Insert -> Field
(clicky) Numbers
(clicky) Page Number
Hmm well look at that, page number aligned left or right and automatically
updated for each new page... with no extra space added to the header.

Did you just make up that complaint or have you actually not so much as tried
AbiWord in a few years? When you did try it (if you did try it), did you
actually read the documentation, look through the menus, make ANY effort to
get it to work?

> 4. Abiword runs very slow on larger documents. Also, it's not quite
> truth that it runs very fast on older machines (I know the example
> of Pentium 500 - the whole page blinks during the writing).
>

     Here you are just flat out a liar. I truly doubt you have ever used
AbiWord at all based on this statement, and am now assuming you are just a
troll who is repeating FUD he has heard from other people. That, or you tried
to run AbiWord while you had 500 other programs running, then blamed AbiWord
for your incompetence in using your computer.

     My laptop is an IBM Thinkpad 760cd. To clarify, that means it is a
Pentium 90. That's right, a first generation Pentium... 586 class, and runs
at 90 Mhz. It isn't a P2, P3, or P4, it's just a plain old fashioned P. It
has 64 meg of ram. Yes, 64 MEG. Not 6.4 GIG, not 1 gig, not 512 meg, not 256
or even 128 meg, it has 64 meg of RAM. Get the picture? This is a SLOW
laptop. (It's what I could afford, if you want to donate a free ThinkPad
T43P, feel free to UPS it at will!)

     I have run AbiWord on this laptop under FreeBSD, Linux, and Windows XP
professional edition. Guess what? You got it! AbiWord runs fine under all
three. It keeps up with my typing, stays responsive, and never 'blinks' the
whole page. It doesn't blink at all, unless I open and close my eyes really
fast. Oh wait, that would be me blinking, not AbiWord. As for large
documents, I used AbiWord to write my NaNoWriMo novel last year. It topped
out at 83,000 words when I finished editing it after the contest. I had
entire chapters in AbiWord constantly, and had the entire novel in AbiWord for
final formatting. No problems at all.

     OpenOffice? Is not even usable on my laptop. It takes MINUTES for a
menu to open after clicking it. That is with nothing else running, just the
OS, X server, and OpenOffice. NOT EVEN A WINDOW MANAGER. So yeah, AbiWord
just sort of spanks OpenOffice for speed, usability, and resource usage.

> 5. It's not that i don't appreciate your work, guys. I'm sure you're
> all willing to constantly improve the program. But let's face it,
> the improvement goes way too slow and Abiword is left far behind by
> other word processors.
>

     It's not that I don't appreciate your effort, guy. I'm sure you're
willing to continue spreading FUD all day. But let's face it, the FUD is way
too ignorant and ill informed to influence anyone and you are left far behind
my the truth.

- Christine

-----------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
abiword-user-request@abisource.com with the word
unsubscribe in the message body.
Received on Sun Nov 6 23:28:52 2005