Abiword Oddities

[utd_grant]

The problem is a hardware one. If you look at this page, you can see that the keyboard is scanned ('polled') by the processor as a background task. A standard laptop will have a separate microcontroller dedicated to reading the keyboard and interrupting the processor whenever a new key event occurs. I'm afraid the LLL will never be able to keep up with a proficient touch-typer.

jameswi99 - If you're looking for a small laptop for use on the road, why not try an Asus EEE PC ? You could probably pick up a pre-owned one for about £100 or new for about £150 and they're not much bigger than the Elonex. I think it'd be worth offering your LLL for sale here to anyone who wants a backup/spare. Just a thought.

[Unhban]

Yes, but perhaps if the cursor is off the screen the processor doesn't have to look after it, and it's just beyond the balance of being a problem?

As I mentioned elsewhere though, since moving to 3MX the problem for me has virtually disappeared....

[jameswi99]

  Thanks Guys - That explains the random characters etc. TBH I have not been working on anything major for the past couple of weeks since I upgraded to the simply marvellous 3MX 1.1 (Just downloading 2.1 now). I will check the performance of Abiword under that version over the next few days because things are about to get busy again. If it is still an issue I will consider a change...

James

[jameswi99]

All,
   I can now confirm that the spurious characters issue does still occur under 3MX 2.1, although it seems less regular and maybe less irritating given how fantastically good 3MX makes these little machines otherwise. I am a writer by trade and so probably fire out considerably more words-per-minute than most people. This probably means that I am at the extreme end of this issue, so I suggest people persevere and see how it is for them.
   
James

[Unhban]

Funnily enough, yesterday the keyboard was all over the place sending out spurious characters (also the machine seemed sluggish), so I rebooted and all was well....

Unh.

[jameswi99]

Good old "Alt-Ctrl-Delete"! Never fails

[LittleDavid]

Yes - ain't Abiword fun on this thing! Seriously, I think a lot of the problems are to do with the toiuchpad: get your hands anywhere near it and it waves its cursor around.. Mine tends to put my typing into the wrong place, or, as you say, select bits of it and lose them! A more serious problem is that moving the text up and down with the slider, which has to be done with the touchpad, can get into a loop, cheerfully moving the text ever upwards until it reaches the beginning. In this state there seems to be no way of stopping it, and the only safe thing is to close without saving and start again. I've even had it looping to and fro on the tab bar, just doing a jig! Is there any way of disabling the touchpad?

[Freddie43]

PROBLEMS WITH STYLES

Has anyone tried creating a new Style or modifying an existing one? I can't find anything on the forum

I have Abiword 2.4.5 and the std distro. When I go to Format > Create and modify styles > New style - I get a garbled screen and can't do anything with it.

And I have a similar problem when I try to modify an existing style!

Anyone found a way round this?

BTW I have the usual problems when typing too fast 

[Whiskers]

PROBLEMS WITH STYLES

Has anyone tried creating a new Style or modifying an existing one? I can't find anything on the forum

I have Abiword 2.4.5 and the std distro. When I go to Format > Create and modify styles > New style - I get a garbled screen and can't do anything with it.

And I have a similar problem when I try to modify an existing style!

Anyone found a way round this?

BTW I have the usual problems when typing too fast 

I just looked at the word processor dialogue boxes; I think you've found the same problem with the original operating system that I found a while ago trying to run 'Pan' (a usenet client).  The program that controls the shape and size of 'windows', tries to force them all into the small display but can't cope with dialogue boxes that are larger than the display and aren't designed (by the programmer of the program concerned) to have scroll-bars if the screen is too small to display the whole dialogue box at once.

The only solutions I can suggest are 1) create a new style for Abiword using another computer and copy it to the CnMbook or 2) try one of the alternative operating systems, which use a slightly more flexible 'window manager' program and so should cope with big dialogue boxes better.

[Whiskers]

[...] Is there any way of disabling the touchpad?

Not quite as elegant as that, but a piece of stiff card seems to do the trick.  I cut a bit out of the box some tablets came in, and scored and folded a nice 'lip' so that the card is less prone to wander onto the keyboard.  I suppose it could be adorned with some artwork or something to make it look a little less scruffy.

[Freddie43]

PROBLEMS WITH STYLES

Thanks Whiskers - think you're probably right. Will try creating styles elsewhere - if I can locate a copy of Abiword...

[Whiskers]

PROBLEMS WITH STYLES

Thanks Whiskers - think you're probably right. Will try creating styles elsewhere - if I can locate a copy of Abiword...

<http://www.abisource.com/>

[Freddie43]

PROBLEMS BLOCKING UP - 'Perpetual scroll'

Anyone noticed that when you try to block up a section of a large document, Abiword seems to enter 'perpetual scroll' mode? Is there any way of stopping it other than shutting down the whole machine? A bit of a nuisance when trying to comment on a large doc - just want to extract bits and put in my reply

[terrykiow]

   Well Leven2e. I,too, use my CnM Minibook for WP and agree that there are problems with Abiword.  However, it should be used only for rough drafts and the text file cleaned up in a better WP on another computer.  I have a much updated PC version of Abiword (also free), although I prefer Lotus Symphony 1 (free from IBM).  I save my files as Open Text Documents (.odt)

[g3wyw]

I had the ABIword problems as well, but got over them by typing slower and more deliberately rather than in bursts.

What seems  to happen is that the focus is switched from the text entry point to the mouse. So if the mouse is somewhere in your text further up the screen then you start typing over what is already there. Actually it seems to go into select text mode as well sometimes, so each character typed selects another word or line and then the CR deletes it! You can fortunately recover using the undo [Ctrl Z] but it is annoying.

I found a workaround for the highlighting and deleting text problem. By ensuring the mouse is down at the bottom right of the screen at all times when I am not using it for anything. Then if it does change focus it actually moves to where it is anyway.blem Make sure it is not in the scroll area otherwise your screen will suddenly start scrolling

I actually had a very similar problem with my DELL Inspirion laptop under M$ Word. That turned out to be a keypad driver problem and I think that this similar. Using an external keyboard does not fix the problem.

Maybe a higher priority for the keyboard input program may be the answer, but this is outside my knowledge level  of Linux.