[sugar] Abiword on the OLPC?

[Marco Pesenti Gritti]

MBurns wrote:
>
>
> On 10/20/06, *Jim Gettys* <jg at laptop.org <mailto:jg at laptop.org>> wrote:
>
>     Our primary focus in the long term is to use a wiki-based
>     collaborative
>     editing system, currently in design.
>
>
> While a realtime system in the form of a native text editor (See: 
> SubEthaEdita on OS X, and others) is an ideal way to get kids to 
> collaborate,

I agree.

> if a wiki-based system has been chosen, I'll look forward to helping 
> with that as it becomes available.
>
>     That being said, abiword's capabilities as a light-weight
>     Microsoft Word
>     display program (and, for the moment, editor) is very attractive. 
>
>
> Indeed. It's interface is quite complex, but it has a great bit of 
> usefulness that comes with it.
>
>     If you want to scratch the itch it really fast, and can get us an
>     RPM of
>     current abiword "sugarized" by Monday, we'd be more than happy; even
>     happier, if it is the version that was .  Even if you don't, we'll
>     may
>     throw onto the distribution as is temporarily, just so we have
>     something
>     in the image that can display .doc files and serve as a place
>     holder for
>     editing.
>
>
> We will look into getting the "sugarized" abiword code, and see if we 
> can make something happen with it. A long shot, but will be fun to try.
>
> Given the weight and complexity of Abirword, a more simplistic and 
> Python-written editor still seems to have an attractive option. With 
> the notable functionality of it being easily expanded and integrated 
> with other Sugar Acitivities. More specifically, I envisioned this 
> editor's engine to be able to serve as the basis for other Activity's 
> text input (ie. the chat and IM program's input can be spell-checked 
> or formatted by using the Text Editor Activity engine).
>

And we can have a consistent interface for editing rather than several 
different implementations, with their own interaction and limitations.

> If the OLPC is planning a more web-based interface, with collaboration 
> and UIs being presented in the form of natively hosted webpages, most 
> of the above Editor ideas fall by the wayside.

No, that's *not* the case. The wiki might be built as a web application, 
but we are not building a web based framework.The editor is somewhat 
problematic because it's on the border.

Btw, another interesting activity you might want to help with is the 
sketching activity. Dan checked in some initial code yesterday. We 
already have a bit of a visual design already. It's considerably easier 
than a collaborative text editor and it doesn't conflict with the wiki 
plans.

Marco