Making life dfficult.

There is nothing in life so simple, so universally understood, so
foolproof but that some eager beaver can't complicate it beyond belief.

I upgraded my Slack system and in the process Abiword disappeared.
No problem, I could just download the latest version and install, right?
Wrong. The install directions were a totally new adventure, but I was
reassured I only had to do most of it once. After going through all the
instructions I got down to the bottom of the page where it said in
essence you could just download a tarball and do it the easy way. So,
muttering imprecations under my breath I did that. Then I started
through the familiar ./configure, make make install sequence.

The configure blew up because I didn't have a file called gconf2. The
instructions at that point suggested that I find that file or a file
with a similar name on my Slack system. None such available.

However the old version of Abiword was available on my Slack 10.2 disk
so I installed that and things went forward as expected.

I suggest that if the instructions for a conventional install are given
they should be given first. That would save a lot of time. I also
suggest that if something called gconf2 is required, and it isn't a
standard component in e.g., slackware, then it shold be included in said
tarball, or a more readily available file used instead.

As for me I will continue to use the old Abiword for such things as
converting doc files to rtf and so on. I wasted a lot of time today and
finally ended up with the old version anyway. Whatever virtues the newer
version has I will never know. It isn't worth the hassle to find out.
(end grump)

John Culleton
 

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Received on Tue Jun 27 20:37:15 2006