[sugar] First impressions of a B4 machine

[J.M. Maurer]

> Next is AbiWord.  Why was it not stripped of support for most file
> formats?  Microsoft Word .doc is proprietary and should be removed,
> not to mention it's useless for children using XO -- none of their
> classmates or teachers will be using Microsoft Word.  



> AbiWord's own format should be removed because its useless for interoperability 

It is _required_ for collaboration, so it can't even technically be
removed.

> and ODT does a fine job by itself. 

... that's why has been the default for 2 months now.

>  RTF?  Who uses RTF these days?  

The whole web is filled with it.

> This is all bloat and has no point for the children.

I tend disagree.

> OpenDocument should be the default format for saving new documents and
> open older ones.

It already is

> HTML support makes sense if children will put stuff on the Web, and if
> so, HTML should be kept in its simple form, no Multipart HTML crap,
> which doesn't even work on XULRunner, anyway.  Plain text support is
> always a good idea, after all, Linux is all about editing text files
> :)  However, I have no idea what "Encoded Text" is.

That's why encoded text is not in the UI.

>  Other character sets besides ANSI?  Useless.  It only confuses the children.

Agreed, see above.

> Appropriate handling of character encodings should not force seperate
> text formats.  Actually it's not even a problem anymore with Unicode
> around.
> 
> If it could export PDF as OpenOffice does then Abi would become quite
> useful.  That's not the case, right now.  I heard there's an
> unofficial plugin to do this.  Maybe worth looking at?

No need fo unofficial plugin: AbiWord core can already save PDF's, but currently printing support is disabled altogether. We require libgnomeprint for PDF output. I'm willing to enable this if the need arises.


Regards,
  Marc