Re: Word Processors

["J. Patrick Narkinsky" <patrick narkinsky ml org>]

On Tue, 15 Sep 1998, Reklaw wrote:

> Offhandly, why not becuase,they use GTK+ only (no GNOME). 

Reality check: a GTK+ application doesn't have to reach far to be GNOME
app at this stage of the game.  (Correct me if I'm out of date here,
but it seems like there are about 10 gnome library calls they would
need to make to be where most gnome apps currently are.)

> GNOME provides a lot of nice things that I don't feel like re-inventing. 
> becuase it's also a windows product (I don't like #ifdef __WIN32
>  either or people whining about getting the other platform up-to-code).
>  Becuase it's september and they "expect" a 1.0 product
> by the end of the year and there sources are still dated august 26.
> 

As someone who's on their mailing list: they are currently re-working the
guts of the thing to use a 'piece table' data structure.  I think they ran
into Maxim #36 of Open Source: you have to have something that basically
works before open source can refine it.  While they had done some exciting
stuff, it was 'commercial-wared' to pieces to meet a deadline and no one
could work on it.

While I tend to think the January 1 date is improbable, I think there is
an excellent possibility of ABI* being a very successful enterprise.  In
the long term.  They make a very good point: if a freeware office suite
can't run on Win* platforms, then it can't take over the enterprise.
Remember: to us, a WP is a WP (I have yet to see the one I can't figure
out in twenty minutes (except LyX :))).  To the typical executive, there
is a big diff between Pathetic Writer of even WP for Linux and MS Word.

Patrick

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If we're to have any luck stanching the vain drain, we just have to 
let nerds be nerds...  Owen Edwards, Forbes Magazine
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