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List:       koffice
Subject:    Re: hyphenation in kword
From:       shaheed <srhaque () iee ! org>
Date:       2001-05-23 20:02:53
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On Wednesday 23 May 2001 12:32, brownh@hartford-hwp.com wrote:

> Sorry for the "me too," but there are certain features that now seem
> to me fundamental in any serious word processor, and KWord falls short
> in that respect. Besides sophisticated hyphenation, I feel that today
> we can also expect typographic (curley) quotation marks, easy
> horizontal and vertical line drawing, kerning (and probably leading),
> etc. While I have the greatest respect and gratitude for the folks
> working on KWord, its present status must remain "beta" in my eyes
> until these and probably some other features are incorporated.

Well, each of us has a threshold set of features before we will consider a 
tool good enough to use. In time, no doubt all this stuff will appear...in an 
open source world, the priority of all such things is driven basically by the 
drive of the individuals involved. You either have to join them, or convince 
them!

> A word processor that is not yet quite up to standard is really fairly
> useless, I feel, for one can't very well build up a personal
> dictionary or store files in its obscure format if it lacks basic
> features or a year or two down the road it must be abandoned in favor
> of some other. I guess my encounter with Adobe FrameMaker beta for
> Linux left me a little bitter.

Please please please don't confuse the term "A frame-based wordprocessor 
comparable to FrameMaker®" with the dreadful UI oif Framemaker (especially, 
but not exclusivley the Linux beta). Give us the credit that we might have 
used these tools and realised their obvious shortcomings :-).

And as for the file format: while I have anything to do with it, your data 
will never be stranded. I think the same goes for the rest of the KOffice 
team.

Also, recall that the KOffice suite is XML based. There will always be tools 
that can at least mine the data, even if KOffice were to somehow vanish.

> I have hundreds of documents and a richly developed dictionary left
> over from years of using Describe, which I feel was a model
> frame-based word processor until its demise (ca. 1998?). It was
> eventually distributed free and I suspect lost any corporate ties. I
> wonder if the source code is accessible and usable?

Don't wonder: find out. If not, and you care enough, reverse engineer the 
file format and write an import filter...or convince someone else to!

Thanks, Shaheed

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