Re: Replacement for Abiword: LyX? Openoffice?
On Tue, 21 Oct 2003, Rudy Godoy wrote:
> On 05/10/2003 at 12:34 Ben Armstrong wrote...
>
> > Abiword has been removed from testing. This keeps junior-writing out of
> > sarge because of its dependency on abiword. I will have to remove abiword
> > from junior-writing, but I would like to replace it with another WYSIWYG
> > word processor.
> >
> > Should I replace abiword with LyX? This will considerably increase the size
> > of Debian Jr. because to be truly useful, I believe I also need to include
> > tetex, which is massive. Furthermore, there is the question of whether LyX
> > is truly a word processor that children can use.
> >
>
> Have anybody take a look to gedit? it seems pretty good for basical text
> editing and not so much 'sophisticated' as LyX. I think it could be a
> good replacement, also taking in count what someone said about learning progresion.
We had a likewise discussion here on this list some weeks ago, didn't
we? Anyway: I still favour emacs, AucTeX and xdvi. My son is 7
years old now and a first grader since 7 weeks now. He will have his
own PC in a couple of days, an old machine which is not in use. So I
will have some first hand experiences on trying this way.
My thoughts are, that we all - and therefor the kiddies too - produce
more than just documents. We produce Memos, notes, personal databases
etc. And isn't using ascii Text the easiest way to do just that? So
we use emacs or vi most of the time. And if we are going to produce
documents, at least those of us who use LaTeX or ConTeXt, we then
produce dvi-files. We switch to the next window where xdvi is running
permanently on the dvi-file we are producing, so we can see how it
looks de facto. Isn't that a perfect learning situation using Debian
GNU Linux? Using an editor, switching windows, using a window
manager, controling running processes, using several programs all at
once?
Also for the creative part of let's say producing text it seems to me
it's easier to first collect notes on ideas and later using those
notes to produce a document.
Finally excercising "writing" with the keyboard is very helpfull to
later have the kids working with the environment conveniently. So
jotting down notes on their project - in ascii ... just the way the
words come without thinking about headlines, underline, etc - helps
doing just that.
Since I never realy used abiword, star office or OO I can't tell how
this works, but I think, if we want help the kids "into" Linux and all
of it's potency, the use of an editor together with other programms -
IMO - seems to be the proper way. I will try this out with my son
from January on, when he can write a little ... and I will tell how it
works, ok? :-))
My two cents here
ray
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