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[dporter]

I like to write outside, at the beach, at a table in the harbor.  What attracted me to the XO, is the black and white sunlight readable screen, and wifi access. I can use the Write activity to write outside and then connect to the internet and upload my writing to Google's app's, and continue writing online or locally.
Google apps, meshing, simplicity, long battery life, ruggedness ...all attracted me to the XO.

I currently use a very small keyboard so I think I will be able to use the keyboard without a problem.

Currently waiting, as I am a third day orderer...

[beagley]

Yah,
XO as a super-portable, durable writing machine is one of my major goals, too.

-Douglas
(Technical Writer and aspiring novelist *grin*)

[dporter]

Two novels so far, written outside with an old tiny IBM laptop which you could read in the sun...

Gonna try to write a third one with the XO

Good luck with yours

[manda]

That's what really drew me to the XO too, or at least pushed me over the "should I, should I not" edge.
Besides being involved in education, my real background is in writing, and I'm tired of lugging my brick of a laptop everywhere and worrying if it would finally die of exposure. And since it'll probably fit in the bag I generally carry with me anyway, perfect for writing on the go. I doubt it'll replace the backpocket notepad, but who knows? The writing would be more legible at least. 

But to have something that I can toss in my carry-on with little worry about jostling it too much [my laptop is really grumpy] that'll pick up wifi in hotels, or be lightweight for getting in touch with family from different locales, or just for editing my manuscript in the sunshine was too much not to jump in on.

And then there's always the hope that something like this can be introduced into our school systems, and having one might help illustrate its uses to the higher ups grassroots style.

[geobreeder13]

I purchased my OLPC for the same reasons - oh, and the whole helping kids and education .

Anyone know if we can put Open Office or some similar open source/FREE writing software on there?

Maybe we should start an OLPC writer's group. We can use the built in conference tools to bash each other's work and toot our own horns - kinda like a 'real/non-virtual' writers group.

dporter: what novels? what are they about? where's your Amazon link?

[msevior]

Hi Everyone,
                  I'm Martin Sevior, one of the core abiword (and OLPC-Write) developers. The Write activity on the OLPC is a fully fledged Word Processor based on AbiWord. You can do almost anything that OpenOffice can do with it.

Regarding the upload to "google apps" idea, we're working on a website that will give you all the functionality of google docs (remote storage and collaboration) based on the real-time collaboration feature of write. You will be able to access this via abiword-2.6 (due for release really, really soon).

If you really feel you must use OpenOffice, fear not, the default file format for write is ODF as far as we can tell, the ODF we export is imported into OpenOffice without errors. If you find bugs please report them to us and we'll fix them ASAP.

Finally I have had a B2 machine for many months (I used to improve the performance of Write) and I must say that I found the keyboard rather small for comfortable writing. It is perfect for small children though.

[lsherman]

Martin, nice to have you here. The simplicity of Write is what attracts me to it and I expect that I'll use it a lot once my XO arrives. Your plans for a document repository sound great and totally fit with the vision for the XO. Does Write have a word count feature and if not, are you planning to add one?

Lee

[dporter]

The important thing is writing ... You can do that with the activity installed.   And you can upload it and read it in google.  Once there, you can do anything you want with it online.

I think and hope it is going to be a marvelous tool for story tellers... both young and old.

Waiting patiently ...

[beagley]

Wow, really great to see you here, Martin Sevior.

I have used my Apple iPhone to write poetry and take notes for short stories, so the small XO keyboard doesn't make me too nervous! If I find its a problem, I may eventually supplement it with a folding USB keyboard... but I sure hope I don't have to. I will make every effort to adapt.

I liked the idea (someone posted above) about an XO authors club! Especially if the collaborative and sharing abilities of the XO are up to the task across the whole country (if not, there are plenty of services like google apps that could assist sharing). Whatever happens, I hope that people who use the XO as a writing tool will post their experiences and suggestions.

I would also love a word count tool in the Write tool. If it doesn't exist, I'm wondering how extensible/hackable the application and/or the filetype is. For example, if the filetype is easily hackable, and the Fedora core of Sugar includes vi, it would be possible to open the file in vi and do a word count that way...

Anyway... I am very much looking forward to my first blog post, poem, and novel written on the XO. My previous novels were all written on borrowed laptops from work... heavy and fragile and with 2 hour battery life!

[PixelFish]

I was kinda hoping I could use Google Docs or the word processor that comes with the XO. (Mostly Google Docs though so I don't have to transfer stuff back and forth between my two laptops.)

[msevior]

Martin, nice to have you here. The simplicity of Write is what attracts me to it and I expect that I'll use it a lot once my XO arrives. Your plans for a document repository sound great and totally fit with the vision for the XO. Does Write have a word count feature and if not, are you planning to add one?

Lee

Thanks Lee,
                     Unfortunately Word Count did not get enabled in the UI for Write. I'll see if I can sneek in an easter-egg to enable it via some keystrokes in some later build. Right now the sugar baseline is under a very hard code freeze. Only mission critical bug fixes are allowed, which does not include adding easter-eggs for  novelists 

Regrading  transcontinental collaborative sessions, that should be no problem. During the development of AbiCollab, (the realtime collaborative feature), Marc Maurer and I routinely made connections between Holland (where Marc lives) and Australia (where I live). It all worked nicely.

The enthusiasm on this site has got me thinking about making a OLPC-abiword activity with all the features of abiword accessible together with the simple connection to the website for easy collaborative writing.

Cheers

Martin


 

[dporter]

If you have wifi access, there should be no problem in using any of the google apps.  I have tried the document, spreadsheet and presentation applications with a broadband connection to the XO image emulator.

[dporter]

Slight correction ... the Presentation app of Google does not seem to work with XO emulator, 625.

When you click on a text box to add text, nothing happens.  If you highlight the text prompt and type text it appears properly within the slide.  However, the text is not stored .... Don't know why.

Also if you want to share your presentation with someone else, you need to have Adobe Flash installed....

However, the word processor and the spreadsheet seem to work as advertised....

[Bastian]

Hi Everyone,
                  I'm Martin Sevior, one of the core abiword (and OLPC-Write) developers. The Write activity on the OLPC is a fully fledged Word Processor based on AbiWord. You can do almost anything that OpenOffice can do with it.

Hi Martin,

i've got two questions

1. Older versions of write had the option to use an alternative interface (more like abiword) triggered with ctrl + n and this way you could save in .doc. Why was this taken out?

2. [OT]: Will we ever see an Abiword release fixing the horrible kerning issues that makes the Mac version unusable?

[msevior]

Hi Martin,

i've got two questions

1. Older versions of write had the option to use an alternative interface (more like abiword) triggered with ctrl + n and this way you could save in .doc. Why was this taken out?

2. [OT]: Will we ever see an Abiword release fixing the horrible kerning issues that makes the Mac version unusable?

I believe the cntrl-n was removed to prevent  confusion should it pressed accidently.

Regarding the MAC version, sorry version 2.6 will still have that bug. Unfortunately we need OSX-savvy open surce developers and these are very rare. Apple changed the OSX API between different versions and we acquired this new bug. The person who ported AbiWord to OSX has become rather disenchanted with Apple and believes that fixing the bug for OSX would be more trouble than it's worth. We have a long term plan that we hope will finally fix the bug for version 2.8 but that is probabaly one year away.