Progress of Cinnamon Writer

@desler & other

I don't know if a docx format is a good idea. Many people don't have the latest MS Word installed because of price. An ODF has 2 advantages : it's not an MS file ( ) and second Abiword (Amicygnix) could load ODF file format, even if the layout appears a little bit different).

Nic

@unimon

But if not be too "amiga", then, we can found that internet full of Doc documents, which, you need to read when you found something for real task. Like just found some necessary document for the work. I agree, ms docs it's standart far from perfect, but its already here, and own the world more or less at some point. So, will be cool to have support of it.

@desler

Imho all of this just up to you :) But imho with supoprting of Docs, CW will be more usable for all of us, and for new blood. But even if you will not add that, CW is already not bad :)

@kas1e @desler


Quote:


I agree too. It's up to you, and I think if you won't do it now, you surely will add in your "to-do cart" .

Nic

@unimon

Quote:

Well, yes, but there's an compatibility pack available for free from MicroSoft so that Word 2003 supports reading and writing of docx files.

Ciao, Alfred

@desler

Quote:

The standard is called OpenXML (sometimes called OOXML), and the specification is available from this website. XML based specifications tend to look a lot bigger and more complicated than they really are.

Microsoft provide an SDK, but it uses .NET, so it's not directly usable on Amiga OS. However, it would be useful to have a peek at the file structures and tags.

To get you started, OpenXML files are actually ZIP files with a set directory structure. So take a .docx file, rename it .zip, and check it out. Images are stored inside as image files, usually PNG, JPEG, and WMF (I've seen a .gif too). As the name suggests, the document itself is described in XML files.

So, you need the following basics:
- ZIP file reading/writing
- XML parsing and generation

Hans

@Hans

Perfect, thank you for the link. Ill look into that

To others: Please know that I am considering either ODF or DocX (OpenXML), but not older formats like Doc. The reason for this is that the documentation for the new standards are much better

@desler
Sounds great! How much time every month do you spend on CW? If you?re going to implement docx how long time do you think it will take? Maybe some help from ppl here at the forum would speed things up?

Will donate asap because i like CW and we need it badly. To bad we dont have any excel or powerpoint program on os4.

keep up the good work!!!! Cheers!

@Joeled
I always spend too little time on CW . My guess is that I would be able to offer first version of CW with either DocX / ODF support within 6 months, but don't hold me on that. A thousand things could happen and I don't know the workload my job will give me in the same period

@Joeled

there is GNumeric under AmiCygnix that works quite well if youre looking for a decent spreadsheet (it imports xls files)

@desler
Sounds great maybe a little bounty would help you? I m happy to spend money on CW if i know we might have docx support aug-sept.

@328gts
Thanks!I heard a rumour about a excel kind of program that was never finished. Dont know the name of it or how far it develop.

@328gts
Ignition
http://www.pinc-software.de/en_frames.html

@desler

I got a guru the very first time I tried to save a file in pdf format...sent the carsh log to your email

@desler

To me the document import functionality should be based on something external so other users can write plug-ins or perhaps it can evolve into something datatype-ish.

You should really be concentrating on your core product, not spinning your wheels trying to implement every document format out there.

Perhaps the core import engine could pull out the documents as a structured XML file with a single core standard - ODF? Perhaps in this way you can leverage import routines written into other open source products out there such as open office?

Same idea for the outbound side.


Cheers!

@gregthecanuck

I agree with you holeheartly! BTW it would be nice if more apps used datatypes,as the import/export system. In my view,the datatype system is pure genious(I only hope Hyperion find time to improve/build upon it some more)

@gregthecanuck

You should really be concentrating on your core product, not spinning your wheels trying to implement every document format out there.
Best note in the whole thread!. A reasonable word processor now, document processors later...

@Joeled

Or you can find also on Aminet.net : DataM_II. It's a spreadsheet MUI based and import also XLS files. Shame that nobody want to try to get the source code and port it.

Basically DataM_II is a demo but on Aminet you also have the public key available.

It is buggy : at the begining when you want to load an existing file it calls Grim Reaper. I thought first that it is wasn't usable, but after maybe 2 min it opens the file and could go on with it :)

Nic

@desler

Hi,
I did some trying out of the latest version. Since a lot of my docs are in rtf format (generated with WW7)

I had a look into what i really need to transfer those files easily to CY writer (and keep the layout)
in fact it is
the \pard \par pair
and
the indentation tags
\liN \riN \fiN

Wouldn't it possible to provide for these a bit sooner?
That would be great

joseph

@JosDuchIt
Within the foreseeable future I will make a complete overhaul of the import / export ability of CW. Therefore, I will hesitate making major changes of the current import / export. However, I will also try to implement clipboard handling, so that might solve your problems on a short term basis

@desler
Please don't bother trying to write Microsoft/Open Office compatible importing of DocX/ODF, it's a lot of work, and there is really no point. Let someone else write a VIEWER for Microsoft/Open Office DocX/ODF, that would be much less work, and more likely to work.

Much more sensible is to support exporting to DocX/ODF, so that we can transfer Cinnamon Writer docs to other systems. Without this ability I won't use Cinnamon Writer, becauser I already did that with Wordworth some years ago, and it just meant I was unable to print them & access them on non-Amiga systems (without great difficulty & loss of formatting). I don't intend to be trapped into being AmigaOS-only again (e.g. SimpleMail supports exporting my emails in a widely used format, e.g. PortablE has basic support for Windows.)

Now, if the intention of exporting DocX/ODF is to avoid trapping your documents on one system, then IMHO I don't think DocX makes so much sense, since it is limited to latest expensive versions of Word only (and Windows only). Where-as ODF is available free of charge for Windows, Linux & Mac OS X.

(Of course, if you implement exporting to DocX/ODF, then you also want to be able to load them too. But this does not need to be Microsoft/Open Office compatible. If you can later adapt it to handle some docs saved by Microsoft/Open Office then great, but don't make it a high priority. We only need that Microsoft/Open Office can load docs saved by Cinnamon Writer.)

@ChrisH
@Desler

I think the best way would be to use available open source resources for importing/exporting file formats. Maybe enabling CW to use the plugin system of Abiword or just port to CW some of those plugins. Here is a list of them: Abiword import/export plugins

That way, Desler can focus on developing CW itself.