Subject: stand-alone-package of Abiword fitting on a single floppy (one file/selfextracting archive)
From: Joerg Schlueter (pepsiaddictedstudent@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Feb 05 2002 - 08:37:15 CST
Hi,
for a long time now, Iīm a user of this great word
processor AbiWord. Iīm not a programmer at all, so I
never thought that it could happen to me to post an
idea to this mailing list.
But thereīs one idea not referring to features or
coding, but in general referring to the installation
of Abiword: I thought about some kind of
stand-alone-version in one file, that e.g. fits on a
simple floppy disk or could be started simply by
opening the "package file" (SFX-Archive) in Internet
Explorer.
Please donīt misunderstand my suggestion: Most of us
have Abiword installed on their home-PC and wonīt want
to take it with them on a Floppy Disk. But think about
all that students at university, where just Wordpad or
Word(viewer...) are installed because the admin
doesnīt trust OpenSource (because he trusts the
MS-"philosophy") - they will have to use MS Word. If
they have a PC of their own (not every student got
one), they will buy a commercial wordprocessing
package for their home-PCs because they donīt know how
to split e.g. the Abiword installation file on 4
Floppy Disks so that they can take it with them to
have it their home-PCs.
Today, a girl I know urgently needed a good word
processor for writing a text at home on her
new-installed PC (OS Win95), and so I came to think:
what about having everything on one single floppy, no
need to tell people: "do this, do that, then install
..." - just: "all you need is starting that single file
on this floppy", or: "launch
http://......abiword.exe in your Internet Explorer
[most beginners only know that browser], then you got a
word processor in that university CIP-Pool".
This isnīt a really great idea, I think, but could
bring much more people to use Abiword. Those people,
not yet "lame" (I would simply call them "beginners",
maybe they will become advanced users in the future),
otherwise wouldnīt have a chance to take anything else
than that normal Word97/2000 or Wordpad.
I uploaded the file I took at
http://members.xoom.it/j0erg/AbiWord.exe, itīs 1.20 MB
- without language codes, helpfile and spell checker,
and all I can say is: I think itīs very practical.
Think about other apps like K-Meleon
(http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net) - it would impower
the not-advanced user to use Opensource-Software
without having to know anything about
software-installation.
Please tell me what you think about my idea, and
please donīt be angry if you disagree with it or
because of my bad English; I know Iīm sending this to
a mailing list of very good coders, and have much
respect referring to your great work.
All the best
Joerg
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