[RULE] Suggestions: klipper, AbiWord, wiki

[M. Fioretti]

On Mon, Jun 07, 2004 00:51:05 AM -0400, Ruth A. Kramer
 rhkramer at fast.net  wrote:

> may I suggest adding a link to the archives in that subscribe email

that link is in the list subscription page. Your suggestion is good,
but I haven't found the way to implement it in the administrator
interface, sorry

> 1. Please consider adding klipper to the list of packages that you
> will attempt to include in RULE.

The problem with klipper is that is not a stand-alone application,
packaging-wise. It is part of KDE so it is not known (to me now, at
least) how to add just that without filling the drive with much more
unwanted stuff. Hopefully through Mini-Kde activity linked from the new
web page) we'll be discover if and how this can be done. Or just find
another way to do the same thing.

> 2. You might want to consider AbiWord specifically because it is a
> cross-platform application (it works on Windows, Linux (with or
> without GTK),

You probably mean Gnome, not Gtk.

> I know that AbiWord was at one time "adopted" as the GNome word
> processor, and I guess that is still the case, but it is by no means
> an exclusive arrangement.

No, it isn't. The main problem with abiword are:

1) It is really light only if it is compiled to live without Gnome
2) It doesn't plan (unlike KOffice, see again our minikde page) to
   converge on OASIS as primary format (the one used by OpenOffice).
   Remaining dependant on filters or proprietary formats to exchange
   documents among Free software users is bad

However, the good thing of RULE is that you can ignore all of the
above because this is not a distribution. If you have enough disk
space, after installing with RULE, you can simply download and install
the klipper and abiword binary packages for the version of Red Hat /
Fedora you are running, and they will just work.

> 3.  I wish you'd consider basing your website on a wiki

The new website does have a search engine. About wikis in general,
this is what I wrote when we were discussing how to rebuild the
website itself:

> frankly, I personally find adding stuff in a web form (wiki-wise)
> expensive for dialup contributors and in general cumbersome and
> limited (unless you do everything outside in a real editor and then
> just paste it into the form)

A CMS like spip still has web forms, but at least the whole process is
much more structured, and we can still add content automatially with
scripts. In addition to this:

1) we had a wiki for some time in the past, but nobody used it
2) I must admit I am somewhat adverse at the basic idea: the wikis
   I've come across so far do look to me as semi-random collections of
   tips, not really useful to really understand a subject or a complex
   procedure. I'd really prefer that I and other contributors (please
   consider joining as such) are told "please add, or explain this
   better in that page" until it becomes one single, complete and
   coherent thing, easily readable and printable as a whole. Giving
   all credit where credit is due, of course.

   It also goes without saying that you and all other present and
   future project supporters are more than welcome to prove me
   wrong. If a general request for a wiki comes up again, we'll
   certainly add it. In the meantime, do send me mail offlist pointing
   out any error in the current pages.

I look forward to hear from you!

Ciao,
	Marco Fioretti

-- 
Marco Fioretti                 mfioretti, at the server mclink.it
Red Hat for low memory         www.rule-project.org

If children must grow able to leverage computers to meet their own
goals as free citizens, that's not possible with commercial software,
period. -- Ruben Safir

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