Advogato blog for tladuca

27 Apr 2003

Sun, 27 Apr 2003 04:37:26 GMT

Jesus, what have I done in the last 3 years? It sucks being one who is easily discouraged.

6 Sep 2000

Wed, 6 Sep 2000 02:45:55 GMT

30 Jul 2000

Sun, 30 Jul 2000 06:22:07 GMT

Cool. Someone on the abi-dev mailing list said the best way to learn its code is to start at a corner. Well my corner has been the toolbar icons and buttons. First I learned how brain-dead easy it was to change the icons, now I can see how to change the layout, remove icons and even(in some cases) change what actions they perform. Moreover I am seeing how many different files can be related to one tiny little feature. I also got around to sketching out the 1st lesson of a possible AbiWord tutorial.

26 Jul 2000

Wed, 26 Jul 2000 17:21:50 GMT

For miniver:

I suppose for now we can debate accross diaries. :-)

You said:

When I work for myself, I have the right to determine how what I build should be disposed; when I work for someone else, they have that right. If I don't like their rules, I can either choose to obey their rules, or work somewhere else. RMS appears to believe that he knows better than I (or the companies I've work for) do about how my work should be used -- I think he's wrong.

Forgive me if I misinterpret, but you sound like you feel RMS wants to control what other people do with your software. No one is deciding this for you, RMS may be urging you to do "the right thing" in his eyes, but it is always your choice whether or not to use existing GPL software or to use the GPL license for your software. The GPL is about how you use other peoples work, and if you so choose, about protecting how your work is used by other people. So perhaps I misinterpret you, but if not please explain how RMS is determining how what you build should be disposed.

26 Jul 2000

Wed, 26 Jul 2000 04:54:46 GMT

Today at work I witnessed yet another Windows protection error. The technician who was working on it, was not able to fix it. I dropped by and tried a few things but to no avail. Did find a solution to the problem on Microsofts website though. God forbid if there wasn't one there or the answer would've probably been locked in "proprietariness".

30 Jul 2000

Sun, 30 Jul 2000 06:23:58 GMT

test

26 Jul 2000

Wed, 26 Jul 2000 02:03:33 GMT

Well, I can't code, but I can dick around with Gimp. I didn't like a couple of the toolbar icons in AbiWord so I made some new ones. Unforunately they're for some pretty useless buttons that will probably go away soon, but I had a lot of fun doing it.

24 Jul 2000

Mon, 24 Jul 2000 03:38:49 GMT

What follows is my response to mrchrist's diary entry date July 31 '00.

OK, this is something that pisses me off a great deal too, it seems like everybody's off doing there own little useless(to everyone except themselves) project, instead of contributing to greater projects that are in great need for developers. It's like people learn just enough about programming to do something that is fairly easy, like cloning something that is already out there, or making yet another(fill in the blank). Few people take that step to get there heads around some large and complex project and help contribute to projects that are much more valuable to the community, help fix bugs, add a little fit and finish, whatever. Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but it seems like a lot of people's resources are being wasted on junk. I wish we could somehow better organize and tap into these people's talents and time, funnel them into the bigger projects out there. I mean shoot, lets get the major apps out the door first, then we can worry about our little pet projects.

Anyways, you touched on something that's been bothering me for awhile. Thanks! :-) Wish we could post this for open discussion. Actually I really wish we each had a mechanism where other Advogato users could reply to our diary entries and have them show up.

24 Jul 2000

Mon, 24 Jul 2000 02:37:42 GMT

OK definitely don't like the fact that whenever you correct an older entry it shows up as being new. Hope that can be changed...

Just was wondering why it is still after all these years to write programs without bugs. I was using GnomeIconEdit that I dl'd from Helix-Update and it was crashing all over the place. Mozilla just crashed on me over something incredibly trivial... well, I just hate the fact that's it's impossible for us to "see" the bugs in our code until our programs crash. I'm sure I will understand when I really start programming! :-)

This whole StarOffice GPL thing is pretty interesting. I wonder wether it will help or hurt the development of AbiWord. I won't even think about StarOffice until that damn integration thing is fixed and until I can download and install one app seperate from the others. I think of AbiWord as the communities word processor, but well if Star is GPL'd so it is kind of too. How will they interact? Will one die off? Will they merge? Will they complement each other? I must say I am suspicious of this whole SISSL(sp?) liscensing issue.

I see a lot of comparisions of Free Software to Proprietary software these days too. People seem to hold them up to the same standard. I guess that is OK, but it does not seem fair to compare software built on a volunteer, community effort to software that people pay big bucks for. OK, I am going to shut up now, there are too many thoughts trying to get out of my head at once!

30 Jul 2000

Sun, 30 Jul 2000 06:26:01 GMT

This is interesting, advogato decided I can post diary entries. How nice. Well, I'm still reading A Book on C by Ira Pohl, and I've read the very first part of the GTK tutorial at www.gtk.org. My goal right now is to learn enough to be able to contribute to the AbiWord project, or some other worthwhile project. I sure would like my PJB-100 to work under Gnome!

<<<< NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS A "BRAIN DUMP".> >>> <<<< DONT EXPECT IT TO MAKE SENSE! > >>>

I've been following AbiWord development with great interest. The dominance of Microsoft Word as always upset me because I never felt it was really the best word processor. I think that title belongs to Word Perfect. At any rate innovation in the word processor arena has been next to nothing, thanks to this virtual monoploy word has. At my place of work, the only WP we support is MS word. If you use word perfect, you on your own. We won't install it, we wont support it, we wont fix it if it breaks.

There is a great barrier for people to try other word processors, namely cost. It's as if the major WP makers want to make sure you have no money left over after you buy there product. MS was $339 for their word processor, hopefully leaving you with little money left over to try another one. MS took advantage of the fact that people want to share information, if there are no word processing document standards, than the easiest way for everyone to share documents is to have the same program. Now Word is becoming the standard and no one in their right mind would use another program if they are going to be sharing documents with other users. That doesn't stop one department where I work from using Word Perfect though. It provides too many advantages over word for what they do. They make huge documents and spend most of their time in the program, so their department paid for the additional licensing fees to have Word and WordPerfect.

Well, MS reaps the rewards of having captured most of the market share. Meanwhile there are no document standards, and most people are stuck with Word. Enter Free Software, enter cooperation. We can have multiple interfaces, standards. Programs for novices, programs for experts, all using the same standard. No, you don't have to fork over hundreds of dollars to have professional functionality that you will rarely need but would like to have there. No you don't have to do something illegal to give your friend a copy so he can read your documents or to use the software yourself because everyone else is but you cant afford it, or because you have more than one computer and you want to use it on both. That is what AbiWord is part of. Everything is open. Nothing is restricted. No NDA's. None of this "Pay us every two years" upgrade cycle.

It is interesting to note that Eric Sink, the founder of AbiWord, thought AbiSource would be a profitable company buy supporting AbiWord. I think that is naive. If AbiWord is free software, anyone has the power to support it, if its profitable they'll have tough competition and good software should not need support anyway. it seems like the project could use many more developers. I imagine mozilla has much more time and effort spent into it. But it's all about money isn't it? Netscape is paying programmers to work on Mozilla, I don't know that anyone is getting paid to work on AbiWord. You cannot escape the fact that this whole free software movement also relates to Capitalism, our mode of economy. Free Software just does not fit in. Everyone has to make a living, so everyone works on AbiWord in their spare time. Can our free community really compete with Capitalism? With proprietary interests? For me, contributing to the free software movement is about changing our society and where it is headed.