Bear Tooth <Beartooth@adelphia.net> wrote on 06/29/2005, 11:22:39 PM:
>
> On Wed, 29 Jun 2005, Alan Horkan wrote:
>
> > Bad implementations of this feature have put many people off it
> > completely but it is clearly useful and I expect it will be
> > implemented eventually but who knows who long that might be.
>
> Very strange. I've been doing it in *ix Pine for donkey's
> years, with no trouble; and I'm no technoid by any means. Without
> trying, I'd still give odds I could do it in PC-Pine (i.e., under
> Windows), too. And surely mailers are simpler than word processors?
Nope. Not even close. Mailers can usually just use rendering
facilities provided to them. Word processors, on the other hand,
basically have to control all aspects of their display and input in
order to maintain WYSIWYG or close to it.
>
> Does the processors' very complexity militate against them?
More like the complexity of the ways it can be implemented. For
instance, what signals the start of an auto-textable phrase? Perhaps
nothing, like in Word, or a colon, per another user's suggestion (Alan,
I think, I'm on Webmail right now so it's a pain to check). What
signals the acceptance of completion? A space, a tab, or a carriage
return? These are just a few of the questions that stall
implementations, not to mention the not-distant possibility that no
matter what method is chosen, someone may say demotivating things
to/about the developer who produces the feature, which really kills the
spirit of the thing.
> If so, can the Other Good Processor do it?? (Am I allowed to name
> OpenOffice on this list?) I don't use it, precisely because it has
I can't speak for the developers (I'm just QA and art/branding), but
using "toy names" for OO.o and Microsoft Word/Windows doesn't
necessarily impress me, and there's nobody here so deceived that you
will offend them by suggesting we have competition.
> so much baggage that AbiWord seems incomparably leaner and easier to
> use, at least for my purposes. But maybe the OP would find it worth
> a look.
I believe OO.o does have some sort of auto-complete, however, its size
and install complexity hinders its usefulness on a USB flash drive as
used by the OP. Additionally, I remember becoming distinctly perturbed
at its attempts to autocomplete my every word when I did use it a while
ago, although perhaps I am just spoiled by AbiWord's "don't interfere
with the user excessively" attitude and interface.
>
> --
> Beartooth Implacable, curmudgeonly codger, linux evangelist
> neo-redneck with FC1&4, YDL 4.0 -- and, alas!, XP for GPS/maps
> Pine 4.63; Pan 0.14.2; Privoxy 3.0.1; Opera 8.01, Firefox 1.0.4
> Bear in mind that I have little idea what I am talking about.
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Received on Thu Jun 30 05:10:03 2005
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