AbiWord 2.2 for Mac OS X

[Jeff Yowell]

This looks great.  Unfortunately, it is not available for YDL (as most
packages out for Linux are not....).



> Friends:
> 
> Clinton MacDonald wrote:
>> The word processor AbiWord is now available for Mac OS X in version 2.2:
>> 
>> <http://www.abisource.com/release-notes/2.2.1.phtml>
>> <http://www.abisource.com/download/>
>> <http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/04/1755214&from=rss>
>> 
>> Give this open source alternative to Microsoft Word a try. Here are some
>> of my thoughts:
>> [snipped]
> 
> As an addendum to my own post, I noticed one more niggle in quitting
> AbiWord: AbiWord uses the the "No, Yes, Cancel" dialog box convention of
> Windows/Linux, rather than the (IMHO, more sensible) "Save, Don't Save,
> Cancel" convention of the Macintosh user interface guidelines. In my
> book, this is another mark in the "minus" column for AbiWord.
> 
> (Why am I so negative on such an inconsequential point? Because, this is
> not really an inconsequential point: in dialog boxes, Microsoft Windows
> (and, too often, Linux) has it wrong, and the Mac OS has it right. In a
> potentially destructive dialog box, the user should not have to read --
> and probably re-read twice -- the instructions before clicking a button.
> If the buttons are named for the verb actions ("Save," "Don't Save"),
> the user knows instantly what will be the consequences of her action. If
> the buttons instead answer a potentially ambiguous question, then the
> user is never quite certain (does "Yes" mean "Yes, I want to save," or
> "Yes, I want to quit... without saving; what did that dialog box say,
> again?").
> 
> (For the record, Microsoft Word X for the Mac gets it *right*, though I
> recall that previous versions (e.g., the execrable Word 6) got it
> completely wrong, and even moved the buttons to unaccustomed positions.)
> 
> We now return to our regularly scheduled flame war about Top Posting,
> already in progress.
> 
> Best wishes,
> Clint