Subject: [owner-abiword-dev@abisource.com: BOUNCE abiword-dev@abisource.com: Non-member submission from ["Thomas Sawyer"
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>From owner-abiword-dev@abisource.com Fri Jan 26 01:39:21 2001
Hi,
First I just wanted to tell you guys that AbiWord is a great little program.
Secondly I want to relay an idea I've had for some time, but have lacked
Tradition dictates what a Word Processor is. Programs like WordStar and
Dear Employee,
As of 11/2/2002, our share value is $10.00. Your 10,000 shares are now
Keeping You Informed,
If this boss wanted to keep this letter and send it out monthly or what-have-you,
Anyway, that's my idea and it would be cool if someone would run with
If you would like to talk about it further I can be reached at 505-984-0879
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: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 01:43:59 CST
From: Sam TH (sam@uchicago.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 26 2001 - 01:42:59 CST
sam th
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Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 23:39:19 -0800
Subject: Abiword Rules!
From: "Thomas Sawyer" <transami@onebox.com>
To: abiword-dev@abisource.com
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And I'm very happy that its cross-platfor, allowing me to use it to help
migrate my clients to Linux. Keep up the good work and don't let all
the hoopla about StarOffice bother you. StarOffice sucks! It's Bloatware
and crashes Windows 2K. But I would like to see table support in AbiWord
soon.
an outlet for it, so perhaps it would be of use to you.
WordPerfect helped mold the early concepts of word proccessing and Microsoft
Word has become the standard of that tradition. The same is true of Spreadsheets
(I wonder why were these never called Number Processors?). I remember
learning Lotus-123 when I was a boy and now Microsoft Excel has established
itself on that thrown. Little has changed really in how these programs
function. They have been mrerey tweaked with minor details, adjusted
for use in a GUI and extended to allow embedding of one type of document
into the other. (i.e. OLE) All in all, they haven't changed much since
1980. It occured to me some time ago that it is high time that some real
inovation come to word processing and spreadsheet applications. Now I
know that you have planned to develop a whole set of Office appliations,
certainly a spreadsheet is next on your task list. But I want you to
reconsider this traditional approach, and instead bring real innovation
to AbiWord by making it more then just a word processor. An more then
any spreadsheet (number processor) too. By integrating the functionallity
of both seemlessly into a single poduct! How do you do this? Its not
so difficult actually. Imagine writing a simple letter to an emplyee
about there stock options:
valued at $100,000.
Your Boss
then he would have to manually adjust all the figures every time. But
if he could simple highlight a figure, name it, and then use that name
in a formula to define another area, well...you guested it! Spreadsheet
functionality within the the word processor, with much more flexibility
and versitlity! And traditional spreadsheet layouts can be derived form
word processor tables. Plus there is no reason not to make the formula
syntax (i.e. an Excel example is =SUM(A1:A2)) a drop in component. In
other words, the formula language could be any given open-source scripting
language, like Perl, PHP, Python, etc. In this way a whole program could
lie behind a defined area/cell and even database access would be viable!
Do you see what I'm getting at here? The power of this paradigm?
it. I can't do anything with it, but I think its such a good idea that
I hate to see it go to waste.
or transami@onebox.com
--
Thomas Sawyer
transami@onebox.com - email
(303) 285-3486 x1383 - voicemail/e-fax