Progress of Cinnamon Writer

@Raziel

I'm crap at gfx, if anyone wants to have a go at doing Amigans.net a CW forum icon, that is similar to all the others we have here, please have a go - thanks.

@Mikey_C

Welcome to the Cinnamon Writer Forum, Icon courtsey of Mason (Cheers Mason!)

@Mikey_C

YAY

Now...where that new version that should hit the streets last week?

@Mikey_C

Is there a reason why the forum isn't displayed on the front page?

@Raziel

Er Senility?

@Mikey_C / Mason
Thanks for the Cinnamon forum. I really appreciate it.

@All
It turned out that I jinxed it by saying I was going to have it ready last week. I discovered a bug, but I havn't been able to fix it yet. However, even with the bug, the latest version is still rather stabile (moreso than older versions). I will therefore try to upload an intermediate version as soon as possible for people to try. I will appreciate all feedback for this version, so that when I kill the big bug, I also will have removed all the eventual small pesky ones . Ill post updates in this forum

@desler

Brace yourself as i have a whole lot of feature requests ready

Cool thing that CW got its own forum here...

*thumbsup*

@desler

Thanks, i'm looking forward for this release

@samo79
Me too

@Desler
Keep up the good work

@desler
I suspect that your "to-do list" for Cinnamon Writer must be a mile long, so I try to refrain from asking this too often:

For me the *one* essential feature of any Word Processor (or in fact *any* software at all on *any* OS!) is the ability to import AND export in at least one widely-used (and preferably open) format. In the case of Word Processors, that basically means ODF. (RTF doesn't cut it for many reasons, although mainly that you loose too much formatting.) I do realise that ODF is a humongous standard, so fully supporting it would be impossible... But maybe supporting a sub-set (and ignoring unrecgonised stuff) would be enough.

All that said, Cinnamon Writer also needs to actually cover all the basic WP features & be stable, and so you are best to do that stuff first. But I really hope that basic ODF support will appear at some point, as that would be a killer feature.

BTW, it could make sense to actually design a Word Processor's internal data structures around the ODF format itself. That way loading & saving of ODF is relatively easy, and you won't suffer from poor conversion due to difficulty supporting some parts of ODF. This is an argument for supporting ODF from the beginning, but of course is probably too late for Cinnamon Writer.

@ChrisH
I have been working very intensely on getting spell check in CW and it finally works , HOWEVER this feature will not be included in this coming release as I experienced some problems with the amiga specific aspell (There is nothing wrong with ASpell, the integration of CW and ASPell is a bit problematic). I hope to follow up real soon with full functionality and I have been receiving help from Edgar Scwan (author of AmiCygnix and porter of amiga version of ASPell). The next big step is integrating ODF support as you requested. However, this is a major undertaking and most likely I will publish several intermediate versions with minor updates and bug fixes. The long term goal is of course to have a WP that is comparable to competitors on other platforms.

@desler

Dunno, maybe its only i, but, have you any plans do have support of MSwords docs (up2date) and rtf ?:) I know how many of amigans dislike that, but still, many documents in that format ..

@kas1e
The primary objective is to get proper ODF support. When that is done, I will try to find and port some command like tools to transform ODF documents to doc and RTF format. I would rather have one widely used future-proof document standard supported that 3-4 standards half-bad supported.
That being said, I would not turn down help from anyone who know Doc format and would like to help me support it

@desler

IIRC, the .docx format (along with its related Excel and Powerpoint formats) are now open, and the documentation has been released publicly.

Hans

@Hans
As I understand, the DocX format is "open", BUT it's description is maybe 10 times the size of the ODF description. Basically you would be insane to implement DocX instead ODF.

@ChrisH

Quote:

Except that more people use docx than ODF. Personally, I need compatibility with MS Office (the latest version), so the effort would be worth it, IMHO.

There may be libraries that help with parsing docx.

Hans

@ChrisH

Quote:

Technically speaking, yes. But considering that DocX is associated with the most widely used word processor in the world, one would be insane NOT to implement DocX

Of course I'm not saying that the implementation would be easy or that Desler has enough time/resources/motivation to do it. But it would be a much more logical thing to do than, for example, supporting the old binary .doc Word format.

Bounty time?

@Hans + Others

I wont mind concentrating on DocX instead of ODF, but i cannot do both, therefore if the majority of users want DocX, DocX it is
If anyone have any documentation or coding examples that would extremely helpfull