Brereton, Stephen wrote:
>the pricing isn't part of the arguement for me!
>It's just the features, just the features....
>
>
>
>NB: open-office is another freebie, remember....
>and I'm not knocking the product, just what it didn't tell me...
>
>
It is not responsible for telling you its features, quirks, and bugs.
If it could do that, none of the developers would ever need to work
again. :)
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Robert Davis [mailto:robertd@nipltd.com]
>
>
>
>>>Not impressed.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
(Source: GNU General Public License)
11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE,
THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT
PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED
IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES
PROVIDE THE PROGRAM "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY
AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU.
We, the AbiWord community, and specifically the developers, really want
to try to make this as useful as possible. Really. We aren't around to
scam you, and if you don't like this program, nobody says you have to
use it. Admittedly, we'd want this to work. However, most developers
work on Linux/Unix platforms for various reasons. We don't have the
time and resources to test this for every possible use, especially on
Windows. As a system admininistrator, as I'll guess you are, I would
have hoped you'd know enough about the platforms available that you'd
know that Unix and Linux printing is very much Postscript based, whereas
on Windows, each driver accesses a Windows API (the GDI) and can output
its commands in a variety of formats, PCL, PS, etc. (That disclaimer
also exists most likely in much commercial proprietary software
licenses, as well. Think about that.)
This particular example, which there's actually a bug in Bugzilla for
(which you can search, by the way, if you wanted to research this
feature before implementing or condemning), is a known issue (somewhere
Windows command line printing stopped working), and we just don't have
enough Win devs to fix it. I've heard it's supposedly not a hard fix,
but I am not familiar with the Windows API, and neither is much of the
team. This could have been resolved in a quieter manner in Bugzilla.
>DL> You show me how to print to a PS file from the command
>DL> line using MSWord and then I'll be impressed...
>
>
>
BTW, I apologize if I sound harsh. I just feel that maybe the adversary
relationship between proprietary supplier and user should be left at the
door when you look into an open source solution. The developers aren't
bad people, and they certainly don't need rash judgements against what
they believe in, work on, and take pride in. If you can't contribute
through code, contribute in a another way. Put up a bounty for that bug
fix, and feed a dev. Work on the Bugzilla database. Donate to the
AbiWord fund.
On the behalf of the AbiWord QA team, thanks for using AbiWord, and
please file good bugs!
Ryan
> <>Well, even if you could, please could you remind me of the relative
> prices of AbiWord and MS Word, and where I can get a cross-platform
> version of MS Word? ;-)
> <>btw, I continue to be amazed and grateful that AbiWord exists and is
> being enhanced continually.
>
> Keep up the great work!
>
> Robert
>
> Robert Davis - mailto:robertd@nipltd.com
> New Information Paradigms Ltd - http://www.nipltd.com
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Received on Tue Jul 27 02:17:57 2004
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Tue Jul 27 2004 - 02:17:57 CEST