Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

I have now experimented with the contents of the Abiword .deb I referenced above and discovered that the only thing really needed from that package is /usr/bin/abiword itself.

So I have made a pet that overwrites the existing abiword with this slightly newer version and it seems to work really well in F95Mid, Medium-2b and Less.

Symbol insertion works well - although the symbol window almost feels "hung" as you first open it. Be patient and it does work.

The deb actually also had other plugins (eg word, opendocument etc) so some people may find it more useful to load the whole deb rather than my pet which is aiming to do just the minimum. As far as I can tell so far it makes .doc, .docx, .pdf and .abw fine. (Did not try ODT yet)

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I did note that some characters in the symbol window do not display correctly - just their ascii code appears - but not many.

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(The size of the Abiword ELF executable in the pet is smaller than the original one in F95 so it will even help shrink the iso size... Bonus!)

Abiword - I avoid using it.
Libre-Office - my "goto" word-processor and spreadsheet.
I'm using FossaPup-96CE
From PupSys-Info: Operating System:
Distro Name fossapup64 9.6 (x86_64)
Woof-CE Build testing;cd5dcd04f;2023-01-21 15:35:41 +0200

My two cents worth.

Собака

@cobaka - libreoffice is certainly good - I offer a compatible pet - 180mb (cutdown & compressed). But this series of pups is small sized (less & medium are 220 - 230mb), so libreoffice nearly doubles the size, which is not what folk interested in these pups want. Hence greengeek seeking a solution for abiword.

ozsouth wrote: ↑Thu Jun 06, 2024 8:59 am

libreoffice is certainly good - I offer a compatible pet - 180mb (cutdown & compressed).

Yes that pet is great.

Hence greengeek seeking a solution for abiword

All I really ask from Abiword is the ability to type up a 2-3 page document or training notes etc that I can save as either .abw or .pdf.
(Sometimes get video artefacts onscreen when adding large photos but then I just close and reopen the document)

The pdf documents output by Abiword seem compatible for me to share with others - and I can save the .abw files for my own future reference or updating.

Definitely would use the much larger libreoffice pet if I wanted docx or odt compatibility.

@greengeek

How about using FreeOffice/Textmaker as a smaller package compared to LibreOffice?

You can strip down the FreeOffice Suite down to just to the WP component.

You will need to register the product

Jasper wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:00 am

@greengeek
How about using FreeOffice/Textmaker as a smaller package compared to LibreOffice?

I was about to recommend the same because it's very small (28 MB), can be run from outside the main Puppy and its "Insert Symbol" function is far superior to Abiword .....but yes, it's not Open Source

@greengeek Just by chance I found that you struggled with Abiword before (see here ). Don't know what fonts are installed in Fossa64-Mid, In BW64 an Emoji font is installed, but this fonts doesn't show up in the "Symbols" dialog. Like the Dingbats font the Emoji font contains nothing but special characters and therefore would deserve to be included in the dialog

MochiMoppel wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:35 am

Just by chance I found that you struggled with Abiword before (see here ). Don't know what fonts are installed in Fossa64-Mid, In BW64 an Emoji font is installed, but this fonts doesn't show up in the "Symbols" dialog. Like the Dingbats font the Emoji font contains nothing but special characters and therefore would deserve to be included in the dialog

Thanks for that flashback - it does remind me that I dont understand the complexity inherent in "fonts" - in their general sense.
This does raise a question about what any Puppy should include as it's inbuilt fonts / emojis / special characters etc etc. Possibly a moving target over time.

For now - I accept the limitations of the Abiword in F95Mid as it does allow me to create (as .pdf) the basic documnets I need - but I do yearn for a more useful WP that could be incorporated in Puppy and be capable of (at least) reading docx and odt reliably.

With regard to the "Symbols" dialog within Abiword - I find it interesting that after installing my recent .pet I see some characters that do not display correctly (only show as ascii codes) yet if I change the "insert symbol" window from "symbol" (which does not seem to allow me to select the 'copyright' symbol) to some other font - (eg "system-ui") - I seem to have a more complete selection available (including some forms of 'copyright' symbol).

All this confirms that I have no idea of what "symbols" are really available - what is actually "open source" - and how to get any WP to do exactly what I want.

Maybe there is some way to have F95Mid recognise all ascii codes for characters/fonts that does not require the use of a much bigger WP such as LibreOffice?? I have more questions than answers unfortunately.

Jasper wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:00 am

@greengeek

How about using FreeOffice/Textmaker as a smaller package compared to LibreOffice?

You can strip down the FreeOffice Suite down to just to the WP component.

You will need to register the product

Thanks Jasper - yes I have done this in the past (I have spent hundreds or possibly even thousands of dollars with Softmaker...) but ended up rather uncomfortable with some of the actions taken by Softmaker to build killswitches into their products. I grew wary of introducing trickware into the Puppy realm. I was always happy with (and grateful for) their products in a personal sense but I totally reject anything that causes potential problems for my downstream users (old people and mental health patients).

Although Abiword has significant problems - it does at least behave consistently over time. Users can get some effective results from it without demands for payment or registration. In my view that is what is worth aiming for.
(But yes - FreeOffice has many benefits...)

MochiMoppel wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:35 am

@greengeek Just by chance I found that you struggled with Abiword before (see here ).

Possibly an irrelevant question for me to make this long after the Murga Forum bit the dust - but I always wondered why "font2font" was a relevant/meaningful name for a "fontview" replacement? It seems to me that your perspective on viewing/displaying fonts and special characters deserves a place in all puppies (potentially).
I dont understand how a name such as "font2font" describes a utility that allows the user to view (and encode/decode?) ascill characters and/or fonts?? (Just revealing my incomplete understanding here...)

Certainly in the modern age I would have thought that Puppy would benefit from a better understanding of how to encode/decode/display all relevant forms of ascii/fonts/symbols/emojis etc etc.
(Hope that makes sense)

@greengeek

Tried FocusWriter ?

It's QT5 based.

I compiled it, but it most probably is available via the PPM.

focuswriter-1.7.4 - 6mb and expands to 9mb

https://www.mediafire.com/file/z4cb5uo1 ... 4.pet/file

When opened you need to move your cursor up to the top of the screen to view the Menu options

Newer builds are available via GitHub but they all require QT6

https://github.com/gottcode/focuswriter/releases

Jasper wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 8:59 am

Tried FocusWriter ?

It's QT5 based.

I compiled it, but it most probably is available via the PPM.

focuswriter-1.7.4 - 6mb and expands to 9mb

https://www.mediafire.com/file/z4cb5uo1 ... 4.pet/file

Thanks Jasper - I just tried your pet and it seems to need Hunspell so I havent got it going yet - but do you know if it can produce pdf or docx output? How good is it do you know?
Cheers!

Focuswriter only txt, basic rtf and basic odt

docx in a small app remains but a dream

Pdf output should be simple enough though even if just through print file output

@greengeek

Hopefully, this should work. I did add ncurses/readline support .............. which might not be needed.

If an error pops up, let me know and I will recompile it.

hunspell-1.7.2-x86_64

https://www.mediafire.com/file/t5yz3l7t ... 4.pet/file

Thinking aloud ............. Pandoc could be used as it is a binary, but it is large and could be only added when required.

If not, there are plenty of online convertors you could use.

Converted docx to odt in this example.

Sorry, I haven't used FocusWriter before, so cannot give feedback.

It does print to PDF.

greengeek wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 7:46 am

Possibly an irrelevant question for me to make this long after the Murga Forum bit the dust - but I always wondered why "font2font" was a relevant/meaningful name for a "fontview" replacement? It seems to me that your perspective on viewing/displaying fonts and special characters deserves a place in all puppies (potentially).
I don't understand how a name such as "font2font" describes a utility that allows the user to view (and encode/decode?) ascill characters and/or fonts??

I tried to get across that this utility is primarily meant to compare fonts ( compare a font to another font). The view functionality comes with it automatically. Anyway, I discontinued font2font but there is nothing I can do to edit the Murga post. Privately I use a stripped down version as font3font, which makes even less sense as a name

Certainly in the modern age I would have thought that Puppy would benefit from a better understanding of how to encode/decode/display all relevant forms of ascii/fonts/symbols/emojis etc etc.

I agree but I see little demand. The current Pfontviewer can fail miserably when applied to an installed font. Try to click on any symbol font file. Pfontviewer will show the silly jumping fox stuff, even when none of the characters in this sentence is supported by the font. This is not what I expect from a font viewer.

I discontinued font2font but there is nothing I can do to edit the Murga post.

I can. Let me know if I can help.

Jasper wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 10:09 am

Hopefully, this should work. I did add ncurses/readline support .............. which might not be needed.
If an error pops up, let me know and I will recompile it.
hunspell-1.7.2-x86_64
https://www.mediafire.com/file/t5yz3l7t ... 4.pet/file

Many thanks Jasper - yes, I get a step further but unfortunately it does not see QT on my system so I have some work to do setting things up. Might try it on F96 just to see what exactly Focuswriter can do.

Thinking aloud ............. Pandoc could be used as it is a binary, but it is large and could be only added when required.

Sounds really interesting so I just tried to download a Pandoc .deb - but strangely it appears that all my usual sources for deb files no longer allow me to download. Seems to be some (SECURITY) label coming up all the time that is blocking me. Download links are all dead. Hmmmm.

If not, there are plenty of online convertors you could use.

Unfortunately not an option for my needs as my son (my main Puppy user) lives way out in the country where internet access is poor and generally only occurs when cloud cover is thin or nonexistent, and the sun has been shining all day and is going down in the west). Must be something to do with the direction and distance of the nearest celltower.

Jasper wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 10:09 am

Thinking aloud ............. Pandoc could be used as it is a binary, but it is large and could be only added when required.

If not, there are plenty of online convertors you could use.

Actually - for those that have online access maybe the Pandoc online converter does have some promise...

https://pandoc.org/try/

This Pandoc thingy deserves a closer look.

EDIT : Dont know how much use Pandoc would be for those trying to create documents (especially with tables and images etc...) but it is clearly powerful at some things.
I just downloaded an epub from here: http://freeread.com.au/ then used Pandoc to change the epub to a docx thus:
pandoc /root/AnAdventureInTime.epub -s -o AdventureInTime.docx
...and it did a great job.

(Had installed Pandoc using the installer link here https://pandoc.org/installing.html rather than looking for a deb)
Abiword can at least read the docx output from Pandoc - would be fantastic if Abiword could output a format that Pandoc could then convert to docx...

@greengeek

Here is the binary and the man pages (Approx 30mb)

pandoc-3.1.13

https://www.mediafire.com/file/oakpf3jq ... ar.gz/file

I prefer using this to convert documents instead of online as I guess the host's could retain or potentially could use your documents for LLM use.

An example of this would be DocuSign

Regarding Abiword ........... why not print the document to PDF using CUPS and then use Pandoc to convert it to DOC format?

Jasper wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2024 6:42 am

why not print the document to PDF using CUPS and then use Pandoc to convert it to DOC format?

As far as I can tell Pandoc cannot take pdf as an input format.
I did try using html output from Abiword as an input to Pandoc - but it seems that Pandoc does not respect "right justified" text. Darn it.
So close but no cigar unfortunately.

@greengeek

How about this?

abiword --to=docx ~/EXAMPLE.pdf -o EXAMPLE.docx

Doesn't work too well with images embedded in the PDF, should be fine for text.

Jasper wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2024 9:52 am

How about this?

Code: Select all

abiword --to=docx ~/EXAMPLE.pdf -o EXAMPLE.docx

Doesn't work too well with images embedded in the PDF, should be fine for text.

My conclusion so far is that Abiword cannot be trusted to produce accurate docx output. (Sticking with LibreOffice for that)
Abiword is good for producing pdf output so I will continue to use it for that. Great format for sharing.
Abiwords native .abw format seems fine for documents that I construct myself and keep for later updating. (No use for sharing with Windows users)
Focuswriter looks good for basic text output and the inputting of special characters - but lacks image handling capabilities.
Pandoc has promise - but in my tests so far it fails to correctly convert left/right justification of text and/or images when converting from html to docx.

I do recall a program "RTFed" which I may hunt down in case its' rtf output might be able to be converted by pandoc to docx.
(Abiword never seemed to have an rtf output that was compatible with other programmes unfortunately...)

@greengeek - is Ted (rtf editor) any use? Is here: https://archive.org/download/puppy_linu ... 223-fl.pet (updated - permanent link)

ozsouth wrote: ↑Sun Jun 09, 2024 12:52 pm

- is Ted (rtf editor) any use? Is here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/ogztops1 ... l.pet/file

Yes, I do like Ted. I think it is very powerful for its size. And it can save as either rtf, html or pdf too.

Sure, it is limited in not handling table borders the way a big WP would (eg border widths and visible/invisible) - but it is certainly useful, and with it's pdf creation ability is perfectly adequate to turn out some pretty good training documents and user manuals etc.

I am almost tempted to throw out Abiword in favour of the more lightweight Ted - but it is not easy to get rid of Abiword's ability to display doc and docx - even though it makes a hash of image positioning.

If only there was a decent lightweight MS viewer for Linux...

@greengeek

If only there was a decent lightweight MS viewer for Linux...

Try:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2read/

Or

https://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/

Both Freeware, both for Windows OS

Hope this helps

Chelsea80 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2024 11:43 pm

Try:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2read/
Or
https://www.diskinternals.com/linux-reader/
Both Freeware, both for Windows OS

Many thanks Chelsea - but unfortunately these are for Windows users wanting to read files on Linux distros.
I am needing the opposite - something lightweight to allow Linux users to read Microsoft doc and docx files.

Jasper wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:00 am

How about using FreeOffice/Textmaker as a smaller package compared to LibreOffice?
You can strip down the FreeOffice Suite down to just to the WP component.
You will need to register the product

Thanks Jasper - I was not keen to go down this road because Softmaker requires registration and has the ability to prevent the OS from reading or writing files after a certain timeout.
However, I now think maybe this could be a good idea - especially if I use Textmaker in shrunken form purely as a docx reader (rather than installing the whole suite and relying on it for document creation.

MochiMoppel wrote: ↑Sat Jun 08, 2024 6:35 am

I was about to recommend the same because it's very small (28 MB), can be run from outside the main Puppy and its "Insert Symbol" function is far superior to Abiword .....but yes, it's not Open Source

Maybe I am incorrect in being suspicious of Textmaker. Maybe I just don't fully understand the best way to make it useable without encountering issues related to licensing. I see your posts here: viewtopic.php?p=39576#p39576 here: viewtopic.php?p=39161#p39161 and here: viewtopic.php?p=39291#p39291
which I interpret to mean that you use this package successfully without license issues, and with the ini set up for running just as you want it?

Have you found it stable and reliable? Do you still use it? Do you have any pet or sfs package others could use?
Cheers!

How about trying Tea Text Editor?

https://github.com/psemiletov/tea-qt

I did upload it here previously:

viewtopic.php?p=105717&hilit=tea+text+editor#p105717

Gone now

If you compile it yourself, you can try off the spellcheck and additional options that you do not need using Cmake.

@greengeek

....something lightweight to allow Linux users to read Microsoft doc and docx files.

OK, sorry, got the wrong end of the stick, silly Puppy

Have a look at this:

https://pypi.org/project/docx2python/

Not tried by me but perhaps the blurb might give an indication as to its value for your use.

Or

https://okular.kde.org/en-gb/

Again read the blurb

Jasper wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2024 3:50 pm

@greengeek

I saw earlier in this thread that you created a script to inform you when your battery was running low and a visual prompt was displayed.

Would it be possible to also include the opposite ie when the battery is full, therefore prompting you to unplug the charger?

Hi Jasper - I have tried several ways to achieve this but have not found the sweet spot yet.
Tried to contact you via PM but that option seems to have disappeared.
I found this post from muggins interesting but haven't tried it yet:
https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 58#p126758
(re cbatticon)
Might be capable of doing what you need??
(I will keep trying to mod my script and will report back if I sort it).

v5 released. See 1st post. Erroneous (not major) upload made 28/7/24. Corrected upload made 30 mins later. Had been 6 downloads.