Re: addition to bug report

On Wednesday 06 July 2005 08:04 pm, Bear Tooth wrote:
> I had put in the report that I couldn't tell whether one or
> two instances of Abiword were open. I presume this answers that.

I debated responding to this, because my response may just add unnecessary
confusion. (If you had included the AbiWord bugzilla bug number, I might
have read that before deciding whether to respond or not.)

(and, I deleted a few false starts in the hopes of avoiding confusion)

The answer to this is "it depends", it depends on how you opened the files and
what you mean by two instances. Let me try to explain:

If, for example, at the command line you typed two commands similar to the
following:

abiword chapter1.abw
abiword chapter2.abw

You would indeed have two separate (independent) instances of abiword.

On the other hand, if you did a variety of other things to start abiword for
two chapters, like:

   * Opened abiword for one chapter (say, chapter 1) from the command line
like above, then within that abiword window, chose File -> Open to open
chapter 2 ...

   * Opened abiword with no file (chapter) specified, then used File -> Open
twice to open chapter 1 and then chapter 2 ...

you would have two separate abiword windows, but not really two separate
instances.

---++ What's the difference, or what do I mean by two separate instances?

Well the difference (to me) is that if I really have two separate instances, I
have two separate instances of the abiword program running, one for each
chapter, whereas if I don't have two instances, one instance of the abiword
program is running to support both windows (chapters).

Pro: One consequence of this is that, if you have two instances running and
something happens (within abiword) to make one instance crash, it is unlikely
that the other instance will crash as well.

Con: On the other hand, if you have two instances running, two copies of the
program are taking up space in your RAM/swap (and using CPU, although I'd
expect that an idle instance of abiword (one that you are not working on but
is simply being displayed in a window) is not using much CPU).

---++ Should you care?

I don't know. I don't use AbiWord (or any word processor) very often these
days--I just don't need one at this time, most of my needs are fulfilled by
email, the web, and a plain text editor.

The example I can give is related to Mozilla and konqueror--i.e., web browsers
that have enough bugs that they occasionally crash. In Mozilla there is
(was?) no easy way to create more than one instance--I'd often have 2, 3 or
more Mozilla windows open, with 10 to 20 tabs on each--a crash would make me
lose all those open tabs and windows. On the other hand, konqueror allows me
to have separate instances, so when one of my konqueror windows crashes I
lose only the open tabs on that one window.

I now run several open konqueror windows (with multiple tabs) and, typically,
one open Epiphany (mozilla based) window (with multiple tabs) for the few
pages I visit which konqueror doesn't handle very well (one
symptom--crashing).

Anyway, I hope AbiWord doesn't crash often enough that this is a
consideration.

---++ Can you tell?

(Other than by remembering how you started AbiWord and opened the files?)

Yes. AbiWord (at least version 2.1.7) has a Documents menu. All the
documents listed in that menu are open in that instance of AbiWord. Any
documents open in AbiWord not listed there are in another instance of
AbiWord.

---++ Is there anything else to care about?

(needs a rewrite after the testing (already done))

I should test this, but I haven't (recently). You might, for various reasons,
open the same document in two AbiWord windows. At least in some programs
(not sure about AbiWord) if both open windows are part of the same instance
of the application, changes in one window will be reflected in the other.

On the other hand, if those two windows (on the same document) are in two
separate instances, changes in one window wlll probably not be reflected in
the other.

(Nedit, my (current) favorite editor, handles this reasonably well as long as
I save the file after making changes--if I make a change in one instance of
Nedit, save it, then go to (shift the focus to) a second instance of Nedit
open on the same file, Nedit warns me that the saved file has changed and
asks if I want to reload the file. I don't know whether AbiWord does
something similar. I may test this after I send this email (why not test it
before?--lazy maybe, eager to reply, I don't know.)

OK, I did some testing (on abiword 2.1.7):

   * If you open two windows (of the same instance of AbiWord) on the same
file (which can only be done, BTW, by choosing Document -> New Window (not by
File -> Open) -- which is fine, and makes sense) changes in one window are
immediately reflected in the other window (you don't even have to shift the
focus to that other window)--this seems reasonable.

   * On the other hand, if you open two windows from separate instances of
AbiWord on the same file you could be setting yourself up for some problems,
as the changes in one window are not reflected in the other, nor are you
warned of changes, even after you've saved them in one instance. I guess
this is something you want to avoid if you have reasons to run more than one
instance of AbiWord.

I'm not sure how easy or how appropriate it would be for the developers of
AbiWord to try to do anything different (but, the Nedit sytle warning would
be nice, imho). (Just for the record, I'm not an AbiWord developer--at one
time I had aspirations, but I still haven't learned C++ (or C, for that
matter)--I'm just sort of an interested bystander.)

---++ What else?

I don't think there is an (AbiWord TWiki) FAQ on this subject, or at least not
from the user perspective, which is what I've tried to write here. Hence, I
suspect I'll add this to the FAQ (or maybe the RAQ (Rarely ...). I'd like
your feedback and any corrections, additional information, or additional
questions you might have. Is this information useful to you, or just
confusing? (I'm not sure it matters--I guess if I put it on the AbiWord
TWiki, those who need the information will seek it out, those who don't/
won't--but I suppose some who don't need it will come across it and become
confused or concerned (or enlightened?)).

BTW, it is my understanding that Microsoft Word, *after* what I refer to as
Word97 (what came with Office97) works in substantially the same way now.
(That way being known as a SDI (Single Document Interface, or maybe, more
accurately, MSDI (Multiple Single Document Interface)--Word97 (and the
windows version before that, which I typically refer to as Word95, used MDI
(Multiple Document Interface), in which multiple documents open in the same
instance could be minimized within the Word "window" (and not on the
toolbar).

IIRC, all these MDI, SDI, and MSDI acronyms came before the tabbed interface
(or at leat, before it became so popular)--when you throw tabs into the mix
(as in a web browser), I'm not sure those acronyms are still appropriate--on
the other hand, I'm not sure they're not appropriate.

hope this doesn't just confuse the issue, or dissuade you from using
AbiWord--one day (when they add collapsible outlining ;-) (and maybe a few
other things), it will be the best word processor

regards,
Randy Kramer

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Received on Thu Jul 7 15:15:20 2005