[olpc-software] AbiWord, HIG

[Mike Hearn]

On Wed, 2006-03-15 at 09:11 -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
> But we are looking for a way that is more automatic for all the other
> users in the world. And we are even OK with the idea of giving up our
> own advanced tools in favor of something more recognizable to the
> majority of open source programmers so long as we can fulfill the
> requirements in some other way  

It's worth noting that whilst the web in general is limited, Firefox is
not. Specifically it has:

* SVG/MathML support for declarative graphics
* JavaScriptable Canvas for immediate-mode graphics
* contentEditable which turns it into a basic word processor.

and they're looking at adding some 3D support too. So dynamic graphics
seems to be improving at quite a rate. And there's always Flash ;)

Firefox also lets you extend the rendering engine in virtually any way
by using an obscure form of Gecko plugin called (I think!) XTC? It means
you can register new XPCOM objects that handle new types of tags that
appear to be regular features of the web page to authors. So new stuff
can be added quite easily.

The web has the advantage of being very familiar to people, and it's
easier to extend now than it ever was.

thanks -mike