Saturday, June 25, 2011

How to make a Hot ABI-Word Soup out of Word Processing (Mallum) Noodles

I was writing a small booklet from the gathering of various pieces of my writing, not related to y blogging of course.

Blogging and copying one web format to another can be a noodle soup with entangled code soup if you paste from one web application to another even though web format is a standard without jargon or macros.

But due to universal presence of Java applets that creep into the web format that is also can be pain in the ass.

But nothing to compare with Word processing applications from Microsoft to Word Perfect to K-office to Open Office to LibreOffice.

I had done the formatting in all of the above and when I wanted to get that to print form for a particular length and breath of the book the macros were playing Pandu (Cricket).
After 24 hours of struggling with K-Office and Open Office, I decided to give up.

What ever I did a macro from five years ago will creep in and none were print ready in spite of conversion to PDF.
I decided to remove macros.

Can you guess.
In earlier edition of Open Office before it became a Gorilla and much bigger than Microsoft Word sometimes, Open office 1 and 2 let you remove the macros and when I had the same problem when finishing my thesis and get print format ready I used them.
Even I find LibreOffice is a pain in the neck.

So what I did was import the document over 100 pages to a ABiWord, my dear friend, now very versatile.

With 3 hours of juggling I removed all irritating formatting macros and got it less heavy.

Mind you I could not change the colour blue (I use blue for eye pleasing effect) to black in some part of the document due to so much of background macros.
I saved the document in abi format.
Luckily Abiword does not have page formatting ability and my current page layout of 6 by 9 inches were left untouched.
Then I forgot I have to post a blog in the morning and I did not want to write something long having worked three hours on the trot on a word document of 100 pages.

If you are stuck only ABiword will help you to remove macros.
I kept the the page size and number of pages to my original plans but few pages less than the original.
Not only that I saved huge amount of memory and when I upload it to America it will be quick too.
There is always a package in Linux to bail you out and for 24 hours I am going to sleep without typing a word.
It will be 24 hours before you get a post from me.
Thank god we are on industrial action and today is Saturday.
Please excuse me for the typos.

I will edit them when I get up.

Upadate.
I hope above blog post done in only ten minutes before I went to sleep needed, another 25 minutes of editing and looking for typos.
I was I was listening to BBC radio and listening to cricket and I had to give up editing and went down to my son's room and peo TV was blocked for (cricket from UK) then I had make my wife to move out to answer a call to get to the digital TV (Capture card)and tune into Eye Channel and was able see to Mahela's mastery.
Take my word, they are the modern version of Rohan Kanhaie and Kallicherran of yesteryear West Indies.
This I said long time ago when they were young
I will not miss a match when Mahela is on song.
Sanga should learn a lesson or two from Mahela.
West Indies cricketres who are young and never seen the two classy players mentioned above should watch Mahela and Sanga play limited over games and believe that they can produce high class players (there problem is batting once Lara was gone).


The difference in the above two players as opposed to Sri-Lankan players were they always played like that every time they came to the crease, limited or not.

I never missed them when they came to Colombo on short visits (including great Westly Hall, Greenich and Griffith and I think Lance Gibbs the spinner).
Sorbers I have not seen playing live.

There is a documentary on West Indian cricket of yesteryear produced by a cricket loving Englishman. Everybody who is a cricket liver should see that documentary including West Indians.

Without them cricket will be dead the way Indians cronies (not players) not West Indian who are marketing cricket like tooth paste and soap opera (Bollywood style).

I hope west Indies stop fighting and play gentleman cricket and beat India who has become too big for comfort for any cricket (IPL included.)
They actually gave Indian a wake up call and  scare.
If not for Dravid, the Wall (a real mature cricketer of class, whom I like very much) I will be rubbing salt on their woulds.
Dravid was one player who was very badly treated by Indian Cricket Selectors, who thinks that any Indian who can play soft ball cricket can represent India.
Now that Kersten is gone like in Sri-lanka (political involvement) all the cronies will get in to ruin Indian Cricket Board and ICC.

On a finer note my daughter, my wife and the Gon Bass (work supervisor) did not let me sleep even three hours at a stretch and woke me up three times on three different occasions in spite of the fact it was a Saturday.
My dog was the only considerate soul who did not disturb my sleep but left a big poo in the living room to state emphatically, industrial action all right I need to go out and I am not a prisoner on hold like in Guanthhimala Bay.

I got the message and decided to regularize my daily routines at least with the dog.

Coming back to ABiWord, it has 30 odd different formats including PDF and LaTex.
Its Pdf file is so light and opens in a Flash.
Who needs Adobe Flash anyway?
I have now decided to learn LaTeX as soon as possible before I am too old (grumpy dog) to learn a new tricks to please the master, from above the Maha Brahma.
I think LaTeX would take even less code behind the keyboard.
Learn it now if you are a young person.

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