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
--- Begin Message --- 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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 .
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