AbiWord Community Outreach Project

I ran across this post (and this one from the 2.0 or earlier era based on the splash screen…) which explains how to manually create a “portable” version of AbiWord (basically just doing a small install to a USB Key). It really shows the resourcefulness of AbiWord users, though in this case perhaps unnecessary. AbiWord is nice and flexible though, and leaves a minimum of things behind on a computer (usually just a folder in the user profile to save settings and custom dictionary, if created). That post (through a slightly-broken link) led me to this one, which also did a similar thing to their copy of AbiWord. I’d like to know what problems with styles and tables they were having in specific, since our support for those should be fairly complete and stabilized - Bugzilla is everyone’s friend! None of these posts, however, make reference to something that a lot of AbiWord users recently have found useful (and something I just tried the other day to save in my server folder) - AbiWord Portable by John Haller. He takes the standard version of AbiWord, does a small install, adds the OpenDocument plugin (which can be removed if you like, instructions are on that page if you’re cramped for space), then creates a “runner” script in NSIS that basically tells AbiWord to use a self-contained environment so it can be run entirely from a USB Key, CD-R (once you have run it once on a writable medium), or other storage device, without touching the host system any more than necessary (no files, no registry changes). (The first blog I linked did refer to OpenOffice Portable, though, which does exist as well at the same PortableApps site, but is significantly larger and so not as convenient for those who want to carry both their applications and documents on a single USB Key or other storage medium.)

I find it interesting that neither of those two posts appeared to be aware of AbiWord Portable, especially when it seems that proportionally, I (as editor of ACOP) and the developers seem to hear a lot about it. Ah well, maybe this bit of Google Juice will help that out. It would be great if we could collaborate closer with John on this program - I know that we’ve helped him out before with a command-line switch for AbiWord that already existed and did most of what his launcher was doing. It would be cool to have a simultaneous release of an installable and portable version of AbiWord.

Keep on marching, ants!

CVS-HEAD (wv-1.0), Win32

Updated Files

P src/af/xap/xp/xap_Dialog.h

P src/af/xap/xp/xap_DialogFactory.cpp

P src/af/xap/xp/xap_DialogFactory.h

P tools/abicollab/service/unix/ap_UnixDialog_CollaborationService.cpp

P tools/abicollab/service/unix/ap_UnixDialog_CollaborationService.h

P tools/abicollab/service/xp/AbiCollabService_Interface.cpp

P tools/abicollab/unix/ap_UnixDialog_Collaboration.cpp

P tools/abicollab/unix/ap_UnixDialog_Collaboration.h

P tools/abicollab/xp/AbiCollab.cpp

P tools/abicollab/xp/AbiCollab.h

P tools/abicollab/xp/AbiCollab_Interface.cpp

P tools/abicollab/xp/ap_Dialog_Collaboration.h

(more…)

ABI-2-4-0-STABLE, Win32

Updated Files

U src/wp/ap/xp/splash.png

U expat_config.h

U lib/config.h

(more…)

CVS-HEAD (wv-1.0), Win32

Updated Files

P tools/abicollab/service/unix/ap_UnixDialog_CollaborationService_Documents.cpp

P tools/abicollab/service/unix/ap_UnixDialog_CollaborationService_Documents.glade

P tools/abicollab/service/unix/ap_UnixDialog_CollaborationService_Documents.h

P tools/abicollab/service/xp/ap_Dialog_CollaborationService_Documents.cpp

P tools/abicollab/service/xp/ap_Dialog_CollaborationService_Documents.h

(more…)

ABI-2-4-0-STABLE, Win32

Updated Files

U src/wp/ap/xp/splash.png

U expat_config.h

U lib/config.h

(more…)

(and Slashdotters who aspire to find the source of blurb text…)

Yes indeed, I saw my daily visits soar from ~200 to ~1400. Fortunately my web host doesn’t seem to be minding at all. The article is about the CM1, the new name of the OLPC laptop. This project is linked as a reference on Erik’s work on the Sugar interface for AbiWord. Way to go Eric, and thanks, Ars Technica!

CVS-HEAD (wv-1.0), Win32

Updated Files

(more…)

ABI-2-4-0-STABLE, Win32

Updated Files

U src/wp/ap/xp/splash.png

U expat_config.h

U lib/config.h

(more…)

CVS-HEAD (wv-1.0), Win32

Updated Files

(more…)

ABI-2-4-0-STABLE, Win32

Updated Files

U src/wp/ap/xp/splash.png

U expat_config.h

U lib/config.h

(more…)