Problems using SIAG and installing Abiword

[redandwhitestripes]

I hope nobody minds that I also posted this on the 'Vector Linux Light released' thread. I don't usually duplicate but I truly thought that it might be best to post this in both threads. My apologies.

Hi everyone,


I'm enjoying Vecor Linux Light but I am having a couple of small problems on the word

processing side of things:

1) Siag Office - great, lightweight office suite but Pathetic Writer sees very buggy. Font size

and type do not seem to be changeable, I am restricted to a single size font that has a vey

strange appearance. Spell checking is also difficult because the spell checker box loses

focus with each word it checks, so I have to click the top bar of the window each time.Can

anyone give any advice?


2) I tried to install Abiword but there is a 'dependency error'. Sorry I forget what the

missing package was, but does anyone have any knowledge of this problem?

Another question: (3) Why is the Xorg driver pack so large in VLL? I'm sure there is a reason

- I'm a Linux newbie so forgive my ignorance :-) - I just ask because I have heard of some
smaller distros using Xorg with a smaller iso size.


Finally, I want to mention that after installing the newest Alsa driver from Gslapt, my system

had no sound and Alsaconf did not detect my sound-card. I had to reinstall VLL!


Thanks,

Greg

   

[caitlyn]

Hi, Greg,

In reverse order:

The latest beta of VL Light disabled the gsb repository.  That was a serious mistake as most anything related to GNOME in our repo (including AbiWord) has gsb dependencies.  We are gradually replacing the gsb packages with our own.  All you need to do is enable the gsb repo in either gslapt or /etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc and AbiWord will install correctly.  You may want to briefly enable the testing repo to get the latest AbiWord (version 2.6.6) which is getting positive reports from testers so far.  It will be in the patches repo very shortly as a result.

Pathetic Writer (PW) is a very old application and while SIAG Office has been maintained until quite recently some of the legacy dependencies remain.  PW works correctly in VL Standard 6.0 rc4 because most of the X.org fonts are included.  Many which PW depends on are stripped out of VL Light.  The net result is that when you select those fonts PW either chooses a different one or does nothing at all.  The solution is to go into gslapt and do a search on the word font.  Then install the 21 or so missing packages that claim to be part of X.org in the description.  That will fix PW... well, mostly. 

HTH,
Cait

[lm8]

I usually see Abiword in most of the lightweight Linux distributions.  Looking at the dependencies, didn't realize it took that many libraries (including Gnome ones) until now.  Doesn't sound that lightweight, although compared to Open Office, I'm sure it is.

Besides SIAG Pathetic Writer and Abiword, there's one other lightweight word processor I've seen mentioned.  It's flwriter ( http://www.whoow.org/people/Jean-Marc.Lienher/xd640.html ).  It looks like both fltk 1.1.9 and the 2.x versions of the fltk libraries are already in the repositories.  The biggest drawback is that this would require yet another version of the fltk libraries, fltk-utf8.  (I wish someone would get the best fltk apps all working on the same version of the library.)  Just thought I'd mention it as another lightweight word processing option.

[caitlyn]

I know about flwriter because it used to be included in Damn Small Linux.  It hasn't been developed in about four years and the last version was only available as part of XD640, a project for a desktop environment at 640x480 resolution for legacy systems.  XD640 seems to have stopped at an early stage of development.

Edit: fltk-utf8 has been merged into the main fltk library so we wouldn't need an additional package for that.  This is from the fltk-utf8 web page:

fltk-utf8 is not maintained anymore. It has been replaced by the official FLTK 1.3.x release.

When DSL dropped flwriter they went to Ted, an RTF editor, rather than a full word processor.  I may get around to packaging Ted but I honestly don't think it's anything special.

You're right about AbiWord having bloated to the point of no longer being lightweight.  When you take the AbiWord and Gnumeric deps into account they are approaching OpenOffice in size.  They're not quite there yet but it is to the point that most people will probably just use OpenOffice, and that is what you are seeing on the netbook distros.

SIAG Office still wins out on small size and at least somewhat decent functionality, IMHO, at least for the spreadsheet and word processor.  I'd love to see something else developed or at least see more active development and updating of SIAG Office.

[redandwhitestripes]

Thanks for all the replies, most informative :-) I'm hoping I'll have PW and/or Abi up and running soon.
Greg

[redandwhitestripes]

Well the good news (for me) is that installing Ted was a breeze and it does everything I need it to do.

At least, it does in VL  It refuses to install in Slitaz. I have no idea why.

[redandwhitestripes]

Hi Caitlyn et al.
I know this is an old post but I just wanted to mention there seems to be a lightweight WP in the works:
http://wordgrinder.sourceforge.net/

Early days yet but looks promising. RW

[rbistolfi]

Looks nice, I built it, but I am getting a weird error on luafilesystem

[linuxgeek]

I wonder why there hasn't been a fork of AbiWord, from when it was small?

[caitlyn]

Regarding fonts in PW, are you running beta2 or beta3?  This is a known issue in beta2 because the required fonts are not installed.  You need to install all the X fonts for it to work.  I have no problems whatsoever changing sizes when the fonts are installed. 

I also just did a spell check and was not able to replicate the problem you described.  Are you trying to check an entire document or just a highlighted section or word?

re:  AbiWord install, can you tell us what dependency is supposedly missing?  I had no problems upgrading AbiWord in Standard or in Light beta 2.  I haven't tried it in beta 3 yet.

re: X.org the only thing I can think of is that some distros leave drivers out, in effect supporting less hardware, or leave out fonts.