What do You think about creating a Bounty "AbiWord (www.abisource.com) for MorphOS". There are ports of this Open Source Linux Wordprocessor for Windows, MacOSX, QNX and BeOS. Why not for Amiga/Pegasos?
We have GTK->MUI Wrapper and Ttengine. Maybe it's a time to use it to build something big? I use Windows version of AbiWord and compatibility with M$Word documents is acceptable.
I sent a suggestion to create this Bounty to Morphzone but unfortunately don't have any answer


[ Edited by FOrest on 2006/1/4 15:31 ]

Yea, I know this WP, is a pretty good program and should a good soft, at least until Papyrus or OpenOffice don't come for our platform.

Are you sure GTK is ready? Last time I have eard it's under development.

I think there is no chance for OO Too big work... Papyrus is not so compatible with Word and unfortunately it has problem with international characters.

As we can see there: http://homes.hallertau.net/~oli/amizilla/gtk/status.html
GTK->MUI wrapper is ready

[ Edited by FOrest on 2006/1/4 19:54 ]

It would be a good program to port. I thought about trying it myself, just never had the time.

@artickfox

The Team AROS bounty #30 for the initial version of a GTK-MUI wrapper is indeed ready (done by Oliver 'o1i' Brunner) and has been already imported into the contrib-sources of AROS, i.e. it's included in the Nightly Builds now (german news-item at amiga-news.de).

But for many applications, further functions have to be added to the wrapper. But this has been the idea of the wrapper: to get it started at all and thus make it easier and more likely that certain ports are indeed attempted, because now a basic skeleton exists and interested developers will "just" have to implement some more functions, but not the whole thing anymore.

The further plans by o1i et al. for the near future are the integration of as many GLib functions as possible and, as far as this can be achieved, the usage of the original header files. But the main idea has been of course that from now on also further developers join this open-source effort and expand the wrapper by additional functions - depending on which functions they do actually need for the respective piece of software they're wanting to port.

Btw: For MorphOS, Ilkka 'itix' Lehtoranta is turning this wrapper into a dynamic library (gtkmuippc.library).

Regarding AbiWord, I do like this word processor, too. But since there is already Papyrus, I'd say it's not that urgently needed. Of course, this all is just a hobby after all, so if there's anyone who'd have fun in porting it to MorphOS - why not?

Quote:

The greatest excuse in the world

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As far as I know these libraryes aren't needed to port Abiword to a new platform. Infact it uses Freetype for TTF and the platform GUI toolkit.

Just see this directory in these sources folders:
abiword-2.4.1/abi/src/af/xap/
abiword-2.4.1/abi/src/wp/ap/
there are:
cocoa/ qnx/ unix/ win/ xp/
One GUI for every supported OS.

After that shoud be ported the BiDi library for internationalization.
It's no so simple but could be archieved by a good programmer :)

Bye

I am all for it, but keep in mind its a port on the scale of firefox. Its a huge job and would require a team to get it done I would think.

For my papers and sheets I use Pagestream, it is relativaly cheap and and Deron is now on the work to make a special Morphos version (I still use the 68k-version almost without any problems) If you have a bigger project and you have to use complex drawing-tools, I think Pagestream is the textprogram for you

Regards, Tom

Maybe it is possible to divide this work in parts or stages?

> I sent a suggestion to create this Bounty to Morphzone but unfortunately don't have any answer

I'm not sure, but this is probably a standard delay. Because of lack of time, or so, Targhan refreshing bounties from time to time. So you should receive an answer later. Or maybe try send PM to him?

I think AbiWord port is really needed. If there will be some real chances to port this program, I think I'll donate some money to AbiWord bounty.

Does it makes sense to start such "big" projects
without having developer(s) for it ?

Is it even possible to have it ported without rewriting
100% code ? I think before starting a bountie we should
see if it is a doable task.

See khtml. This was started AFTER it was clear that
it's doable and a developer takes the bounty.

KHTML is "Self Bounty"... I know...
But... Does Amizilla have developer? Is it without sense? Tell me how to find a developer? I dont know any other way than bounty...

Amizilla ha(s|d) developers ... atm it looks dead to me (even with
the few students that try to make it a project for their study).

What I want to say is that it makes no sense to put money
in a project nobody wants to port (or can port alone).
Teamwork has failed much too often in the past ...

Many MorphOS developers spend their time on the #morphos channel
on irc ... perhaps you find someone