Talk:Write

Missing Manual?

This page is headed "for the general public," but the structure ("Goals" etc) sounds like a document for developers.

There should be links to actual user-level instruction here (if that is not what this page is.) 

If this page IS the user documentation, it should be organized around tasks:

• How to create a new document
• How to name or title a document
  • How to rename a document
  • How to save a copy under a new name, such as "Monday's draft," "Tuesday's draft..."
• How to delete a document
• How to find and reopen a document you created earlier
• How to send that document to another child, a teacher or another person
• How to put the document on a removable memory (USB or SD) for printing on a bigger computer
• How to copy a document from a USB or SD
• How to open an existing document on a USB drive or SD, including available document formats, any restrictions about file names or extensions, etc.

For reference, and for alternate learning models, document each menu/mode and the actions each makes possible. Add a paragraph under each of these headings. Add clear but small screen images (remember some readers will read this ON an XO):

• Activity...
• Edit...
• Text...
• Image...
• Table...
• Format...
• View...

I'll stop there, because at this stage of development, I assume all this has been done somewhere else by someone.
Robby 10:06, 12 January 2008 (EST)

Goals

How do you open an existing document, for example, a text file on a USB drive

Answer:

Click the USB drive and you will see a Journal listing of items on the drive.

Locate the title of the item you wish to open. Click the title of the item once. This will open a preview page in the journal, showing a document icon, the document title in a gray rounded rectangular area similar to a browser's address bar, and a preview of the visual appearance of the document. Below the preview will be the words Description (you can add a description here) and Tags (you can add keywords here).

When you see the document in the preview screen (preceding paragraph), find the rectangle icon: it is at the right-hand side of the black task bar at the top of the screen.

When you move the mouse/trackpad pointer over the rectangle, you will see a drop-down menu that includes the word Resume and possible choices of Activities (e.g. Write, EToys) that you can use to open the document. Move the mouse/trackpad pointer to the desired Activity and click once. The Activity will open and the document will open.

NOTE: If you have been attempting to open RTF documents created on another platform, for example MacOSX TextEdit, you may find that this is not possible. I have written a bug report on this subject and posted it on the page for Write under the "desired features" section. If you have trouble attempting to open specific types of documents, please add your input to that posting, and/or find a way to bring it to the attention of developers. The inability to open standard cross-platform document types is a major issue in my opinion and needs serious attention ASAP.

NOTE: You can definitely open .TXT documents on the XO that were created in MacOSX TextEdit as .TXT documents. You can make changes to those documents on the XO and save as .TXT, and then open them on the Mac. I've tested this function and it works, so you can use .TXT as a workaround for transferring information between platforms. These docs will have to be created as .TXT, rather than converted from other formats, otherwise garbage characters may appear. However, .TXT is not a permanent solution; .RTF is a basic standard that also needs to be made working.

(posted by G510, not a registered user but one of the first to order an XO via G1G1) (Yes I need to register.. will do tomorrow, possibly under a different UserID.)

Feature Requests

Functionality Test states: " save document" this needs clarification as earlier in the page it states: "no need to ever do a save" Clarification of "save" "keep" and "name" is needed. The WRITE record in the journal is not named and thereby not really saved unless marked as something someone might recognize. Also clicking on WRITE listing in journal does not open document. Explanation of filling out attributes in journal section to make use of tracking write creations is needed.Peidavey 21:53, 26 December 2007 (EST)

Significant problem found: .RTF document format appears to be incompatible between XO Write activity and MacOSX TextEdit.

Documents created as RTF in MacOSX TextEdit cannot be opened on the XO, and documents created as RTF in XO Write cannot be opened on the Mac.

The only way to open an XO RTF on the Mac is to convert the file extension to .TXT on the Mac, at which point all actual formatting is lost, a bunch of "garbage characters" appears (presumably the formatting control characters), and there is a warning message saying do not attempt to edit this document.

There does not appear to be a way to open a Mac RTF on the XO: all I get is a blank Write page.

Documents created as .TXT in XO Write are compatible with .TXT in MacOSX TextEdit, in both directions. While this may be tolerable as a temporary workaround, it is not an acceptable long-term solution.

RTF is supposed to be a cross-platform document standard, so this needs to be fixed. A search of this site for RTF turned up nothing so this may be the first report of this issue.

Also please reply to this posting if possible, advising where further information and/or a fix can be found. Thanks...

(User: g510, not registered; however, one of the first to order an XO)

Found similar problem with .rtf created with Write. Transferred to Windows 2000 environment via USB flash drive. When opened as .rtf (using Word 2000), looks like all the coding is displayed, along with an AbiWord banner. I tried to change the file extension to see what would happen. I tried .html and got my original rtf file, except with a 'strikethrough' effect for all of the text, and the words "application/x-abiword AbiWord" at the top of the page (not struck-through). Extension .txt also showed codes and a suggestion to not edit the document by hand. I am a G1G1 donor and not technically trained, but hope this data is useful.

(User: amysey - As a note, I tried to logon this evening to the Wiki and could not see the logon window.)

POSSIBLE FUTURE feature request: Import/export for the Open Document text Format (.odt). As Abiword's native support improves, this should become possible. My reasons are not political, but practical. ODF is an ISO standard and is actually in use and we already have RTF and DOC support (sorta...). Again, this is a FUTURE ENHANCEMENT request for the consideration of the developers. Thanks.