Re: Decoupling GNOME Office?

[Mike Sangrey <mike sojurn lns pa us>]

kschumacher@uswest.net said:
> I manage a medium size computer installation, and the number one
> complaint I get on word processors (Word, Wordperfect, and StarOffice)
> is that they are too hard to learn.  I wouldn't mind seeing AbiWord
> become an easy to learn, comfortable word processor that can
> interchange documents with  StarOffice.  In this role it would make
> sense to have both StarOffice and AbiWord as part of Gnome (AbiWord
> and AbiWord-Heavy...).

I have often thought that a word processor could be modularized along the 
lines of features.  In other words, the simple core would provide all the 
capabilities one would need to write memos, letters, that sort of thing.  But, 
at a certain point the person wants `styles'.  So, "click"..."click", enable 
the `style' plugin and styles and their prerequisites come into play.  Later, 
they need `tables'.  "click" again.  Other features like, equations, 
versioning (ie. margin bars and possibly the self storage of the diffs), etc., 
would be available.  And so on.

I've thought this would remove the objection, "This beast is just to hard to 
learn."

I picture these "plugins" as being network available and served up via CORBA.

Part of the problem which Kent is addressing is Joe User can be overwhelmed by 
the immensity of the feature set.  "How can I change all `foo' to `bar' in my 
file?"  "Well, you can use vi, emacs, sed, ed, awk, perl, python, ..."  is NOT 
the answer they want.  Splattering all the features across the toolbar and 
menus is just overwhelming.  However, if the user selects the availability of 
those features as they need them, then the feature set grows with their 
ability to get their minds around the feature set.

-- 
Mike Sangrey
mike@sojurn.lns.pa.us
Landisburg, Pa.
       Every Christian library should have a plaque which states:
              "There is one book which explains all these."