Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Senex on October 04, 2012, 04:06:11 AM
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Since on the one hand there is not much interest at MorphZone (http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8818&forum=32) and on the other hand it seems Woody is even ten years after my previous contact (back then trying to evaluate if Genesi could acquire the sources) still looking for a fortune, I'd just like to mention here that he's still reachable an willing to sell the source in case someone would e.g. like to initiate a cross-platform bounty project for it.
Everything else can be found at the link above. Thus if in the Amiga, OS4 and AROS communities there would be more interest in buying the FinalWriter source code and anyone would seriously intend to start a bounty project, I'd happily send him a PM with the e-mail address.
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Since on the one hand there is not much interest at MorphZone (http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8818&forum=32) and on the other hand it seems Woody is even ten years after my previous contact (back then trying to evaluate if Genesi could acquire the sources) still looking for a fortune, I'd just like to mention here that he's still reachable an willing to sell the source in case someone would e.g. like to initiate a cross-platform bounty project for it.
Everything else can be found at the link above. Thus if in the Amiga, OS4 and AROS communities there would be more interest in buying the FinalWriter source code and anyone would seriously intend to start a bounty project, I'd happily send him a PM with the e-mail address.
NICE! Thanks for that! I would gladly contribute to a bounty or even an outright buy! I love FinalWriter! :)
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I'd contribute to a Final Writer bounty. I wonder if Woody would consider a smaller sum for a freeware (no source code) release?
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ABSOLUTELY!!! Interestingly, FinalWriter is probably the program I use most on my Amigas. I do almost all my writing in FinalWriter because, for some reason, I feel more inspired while working on an Amiga. I'd be tempted to drop a small fortune into a FinalWriter bounty.
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Since on the one hand there is not much interest at MorphZone (http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8818&forum=32) and on the other hand it seems Woody is even ten years after my previous contact (back then trying to evaluate if Genesi could acquire the sources) still looking for a fortune, I'd just like to mention here that he's still reachable an willing to sell the source in case someone would e.g. like to initiate a cross-platform bounty project for it.
Everything else can be found at the link above. Thus if in the Amiga, OS4 and AROS communities there would be more interest in buying the FinalWriter source code and anyone would seriously intend to start a bounty project, I'd happily send him a PM with the e-mail address.
Hi. The easiest way to know how much interest is there, is to ask the author the amount of money he wants for the Source and the simply start the Bounty at http://www.power2people.org/contact.
You would need to ask the author if the sources are all C/C++ because anything else wont work for a cross platform project.
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I am afraid Woody is expecting too much for the Source Code for Final Writer. Maybe he does not realize how much the Amiga community has decreased over the last 10 years.
I supported Woody fully when Softwood was still supporting the Amiga with new releases, as I purchased Final Copy, Final Copy II, and every version of Final Writer from beginning to end, including the Windows version of Final Writer, plus I also purchased Final Data and Final Calc and the updates for them as well. I just don't think the Source Code for Final Writer is worth that much money any more and I wish he would let it go for less money than he apparently is asking for it still. As Senex stated over on the MZ.org thread, Woody does not even own all of Final Writer Sources, because parts of it were licensed, such as the Speller, and maybe the Grammar portions of it.
I really like Final Writer, but I think if we are all going to put money into a bounty for a good word processor, we should concentrate on a more modern word processor program that will support more import and export formats and allow us to interact with documents from main stream word processing and DTP programs on all platforms. Like Open Office did and what ever the correct spelling is for it's successor (Libre Office???)
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with the out of date old amiga bounty system, things either take years or never get done.
put up a kickstarter have it run for four weeks ask for the money you need... when you got the money, finish the project to the set deadline in the kickstarter...
if you don't get the money for the kickstarter you need, then you know there is not enough interest in this project, and its not meant to be.
heres link to kickstarter...
http://www.kickstarter.com/
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I'd honestly like to see a full OpenOffice port, but I'd be happy to contribute to a bounty for FW if the source would be released.
Simply making the program freeware doesn't do much for me without the source.
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IIRC FinalWriter doesn't have undo function, which kind of sucks..
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Er, I mean undo function multiple undo history...
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I am afraid Woody is expecting too much for the Source Code for Final Writer. Maybe he does not realize how much the Amiga community has decreased over the last 10 years.
How much is he asking for? More or less than GPSoft is asking for the DirectoryOpus Magellan sources?
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Indeed, the actual amount would be nice. If it's reasonable, and it'd be possible to shine up FW to handle .odt and .doc (it already does RTF) and port it across the amiga ecosystem, it'd be cool.
If it's a giant pile of money, why bother? There's other options out there.
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I would donate for a Wordworth bounty... :-)
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If he thinks it's so damned valuable, why hasn't he released a modern version himself?
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I would pay for the source for
InterWord (by far the best text word processor for the Amiga IMHO)
KindWords 3
I always felt that Wordsworth and FinalWriter were too bloated (slow) on standard Amigas.
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Ugh, you guys are too focused on the past.
That's why I'm siding with Fraggle on MorphZone.
A clean approach and a new product.
Why would you want to use something this old?
BTW - It still runs under MorphOS if you're into pain.
Me, myself - I just use Goggle Docs.
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Ugh, you guys are too focused on the past.
That's why I'm siding with Fraggle on MorphZone.
A clean approach and a new product.
Why would you want to use something this old?
BTW - It still runs under MorphOS if you're into pain.
Me, myself - I just use Goggle Docs.
I can't get google docs to cooperate with loading an odt file from my computer. Any suggestions?
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I can't get google docs to cooperate with loading an odt file from my computer. Any suggestions?
Wow! That's still a problem?
The first time I heard the complaint was about three years ago when they screwed up that capability (it had worked prior to that).
Personally, I do a lot of work with PDFs and they upload fine.
I'll take a look into it.
They should have had this one solved a while ago.
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I would pay for the source for
InterWord (by far the best text word processor for the Amiga IMHO)
KindWords 3
I always felt that Wordsworth and FinalWriter were too bloated (slow) on standard Amigas.
Just for your info: Kindwords3 is the same as an very old version of WordWorth...
In other words, you wont get anything!
To me, Interword seems to be very ugly, and by now it was impossible to reach the
original authors...
Developing a real world Amiga program skeleton and include the stuff from e.g. AbiWord
would be IMHO the best solution. Of course it have to be open sourced from the
beginning...
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Bah, wouldn't it be easier to get the Abiword port up to date?
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Amiga way to solve problem with doc/docx file types would be build filetype that would support them.
We don't need a whole program, but support for file type would be essential.
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So we're down to
a)support a new program...or
b)update or port something thats either going to be costly or time consuming (which inthat case,OO has my support).
basically we've reached the same point that the guys on MorphZone did
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I can't get google docs to cooperate with loading an odt file from my computer. Any suggestions?
Yeah, blame Fab ;)
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Why would you want to use something this old?.
Funny quote considering this is an Amiga forum. ;-)
I'd say, it depends on whether or not it works well.
If it works well and we only need to tweak file formats, then it should still be fine, even tho it's "this old."
desiv
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Funny quote considering this is an Amiga forum. ;-)
I'd say, it depends on whether or not it works well.
If it works well and we only need to tweak file formats, then it should still be fine, even tho it's "this old."
desiv
Not a bad point.
But to the best of my knowledge, we were discussing software for NG machines.
But, since word processing doesn't require that much horsepower, I don't see why these same packages couldn't run under AOS3.X or AROS68K.
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Ugh, you guys are too focused on the past.
That's why I'm siding with Fraggle on MorphZone.
A clean approach and a new product.
Why would you want to use something this old?
BTW - It still runs under MorphOS if you're into pain.
Me, myself - I just use Goggle Docs.
There's already Claus Desler's Cinnamon Writer. The project started life on OS4 but there is already an AROS build, not sure about MorphOS yet but the intention is to have it working on all 3. Any money might be better spent supporting that initiative.
http://desler.be/modules/wfchannel/
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Yeah, I suppose what I was getting at was that I think the codebase for the older WP programs might be just about fine, if the basic feature set is still good.
Trying to add compatibility for modern formats might (??) to an older codebase might be easier than trying to port more modern (and bloated IMHO) programs...
desiv
I had a friend who always swore that Word for the Mac (version 4 maybe?) was the best word processor ever, and that it's been mostly bloat from there on.. ;-)
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Trying to add compatibility for modern formats might (??) to an older codebase might be easier than trying to port more modern (and bloated IMHO) programs...
If we want compatibility with modern formats it might be a massive project with eternal bug fixing with the old programs which weren't designed for that in the first place. Stretching old programs with patch over patch doesn't sound very good option in my opinion. Especially with the amount of coders we'd have for those kinds of projects... they probably lost their interest even before it gets anywhere near the specs of the modern programs.
I think it would be better to port some modern software, even if it's a big job at first. But if the port gets made, then it already has pretty good compatibility with modern formats and maybe applying the new changes would be easier in future.
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There's already Claus Desler's Cinnamon Writer. The project started life on OS4 but there is already an AROS build, not sure about MorphOS yet but the intention is to have it working on all 3. Any money might be better spent supporting that initiative.
http://desler.be/modules/wfchannel/
Yeah, Claus is working on the port right now.
And Fraggle has commited to buying Claus a Mac Mini to run MorphOS on.
So hopefully, one day, we'll have a word processor that works across all the NG OS'.
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If we want compatibility with modern formats it might be a massive project with eternal bug fixing with the old programs
Yes, it might..
Or it might not... I only mean it is worth considering the options..
they probably lost their interest even before it gets anywhere near the specs of the modern programs.
And that is one of my points..
Are we doing this for what we need? Or are we doing this to reach the "specs of the modern programs"? Those might be very different things...
I think it would be better to port some modern software, even if it's a big job at first. But if the port gets made, then it already has pretty good compatibility with modern formats and maybe applying the new changes would be easier in future.
I think sometimes, this is true...
But other times, people end up adding/chasing features that virtually no one will use..
If you watch the amount of changes that go into things like Open/Libre/{whatever it's called now}Office just trying to "catch" the current products with features I think most people will never use, I think THAT is a HUGE amount of work.
Now true, if you port the development libs over, so you can just use the same codebase with virtually no changes, then you can use the work of others.. Great.
But if you have to keep re-porting major parts whenever an update comes out, it might not be worth it..
And I've always been a fan of native code for native OS/hardware for speed and simplicity...
desiv
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And I've always been a fan of native code for native OS/hardware for speed and simplicity...desiv
Which is why I'm back to Cinnamon Writer. Yeah, it starts out on OS4, but the other two NG OS' its moving to also support the OS3.1 API.
Very native (and a lot less work then Open Office).
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As Senex stated over on the MZ.org thread, Woody does not even own all of Final Writer Sources, because parts of it were licensed, such as the Speller, and maybe the Grammar portions of it.
I really loved Final Writer and bought all the versions available. The really cool thing was the Thesaurus (unmatched by MS Word or any other one I've seen). If it isn't included, IMHO it's not worth the effort. Still Final Writer was the most Amiga-like program. No port of any Linux-based app will come close.
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Are we doing this for what we need? Or are we doing this to reach the "specs of the modern programs"? Those might be very different things...
I think this whole fuss is about having program with compatibility with modern programs and their formats. And I think that requires that most features have to be supported then. I think they save pretty complex things in their doc files and all those should be reproduceable on our programs. So, we have to reach their standards... and that is a really big job to write from scratch or glue into old software.
If there wouldn't be desire for compatibility, then Final Writer and other old programs would be just fine for the needs of the most people.
And I've always been a fan of native code for native OS/hardware for speed and simplicity...
Me too, but in some cases it's just not possible with today's requirements and resources. Many things have ran away from single/small coder base project's capabilities. Like with movie players, browsers... and I think with this office/wp case too.