Open Source Presentation Software

There's a good article over at Linux Revolution about the gaping hole in the Free Software desktop - the lack of a good presentation application.

He misses out a couple of options - notably KPresent and Inkview - but they are hardly earth shattering alternatives. I suppose you could, at a stretch, even involve Dia with this.

I also remember rumours of adapting AbiWord to do slideshows as well (look for AbiPresent).

I'd like to see Inkview get more backing. It comes from a strong SVG background with Inkscape, meaning it is designed around the graphics rather than designed as a Powerpoint clone. I think that's the kind of approach that is needed here, something a little "outside the box" compared to the standard.

Anyway, the article is a good read (as are most of the LR posts) with some good comments so head over and check it out. :-)

Word Processor Reviews

There's an extensive review of word processing options over at DonationCoder.com which includes the two notable open source applications OpenOffice.org Writer and AbiWord.

The criticism of AbiWord is especially harsh but I think it's something they really need to take on board. I remember posting to the AbiWord development list about the program struggling to handle a reference I was writing for another open source project, and was told point blank not to expect AbiWord to handle anything more than basic documents. I was taken aback, to say the least.

The frustrating thing is, with a bit of care taken to make it more robust, AbiWord really has a lot of potential. It is not bloated like OOo Writer, it can gain innovative new features like AbiCollab. It can work well with other "Gnome Office" applications like Gnumeric. And it does - contrary to the statement of the review - support advanced things like equation editing (see 2.4.0 release notes).

The problem is, it is [in the open source arena] the little guy. The big players are backing the big boy, OOo Writer, and the Abi devs have been unable to take advantage of their position so far because they have not been able to make it robust enough to retain users. I just could not rely on it when I tried to adopt AbiWord earlier last year. User retention is everything in the software industry and especially so in open source software. No users, no community, no contributors.

My advice? Take the review criticism seriously. If there are false statements (such as the equation editing) then the problem is documentation. Otherwise, the criticisms are the major reasons people are not using AbiWord.