[PLUG] Printing envelopes from StarOffice

[Carla Schroder]

On Wednesday 08 May 2002 06:58 pm, you wrote:
> On Wed, 8 May 2002, Carla Schroder wrote:
> > Au contraire, mine intrepid Linux explorer. File -> Page Setup -> Paper
> > Size. Nice WYSIWYG envelope that lets you type any darn where you please
> > on it, even insert a picture. Much more flexible than Brand X. I like
> > Abiword a whole heck of a lot, it is my main word processor. It handles
> > Word docs quite well. With AbiWord and Gnumeric, I have achieved
> > happiness.
>
>   Oh. Thanks, Carla. I've been busy this afternoon building and installing
> the two programs. I greatly appreciate the pointer. Will it take the
> address from a letter that's open?

No, must copy & paste. Must choose-  more clicks, or fatter code. ;-)

>
>   Anyway, that's good to know. OpenOffice takes forever (like So and, I
> presume, winWord) to open. And the source code is 69M! Whew! I'd rather
> work with AbiWord as it appears that after 18 years of use, WordPerfect has
> reached the end of its useful life. 
> One last question about AbiWord for
> you: can I select single- or double-sided printing from within the
> application? Let me explain.
>
>   My CUPS system is set for double-sided printing. But, within WordPerfect,
> letters, invoices and so on are to be printed single-sided. WP would
> default to single-sided printing, but I could set it for duplex on a
> document-specific level. How does abiword do with this?

I don't know about duplex printing, it's not mentioned anywhere in the docs, 
and it's not on the menu. I have version .99.3, a couple steps behind the 
latest n greatest. Open/Star Office duplexes.
 
Winword is pretty fast, on a fast machine. It's quite sophisticated, I've 
built large complex documents with all sorts of intricate page-numbering 
schemes, and Byzantine page layouts. The main reasons I have to not like it 
are it won't run on Linux, and the deliberate and ever-evolving file format 
incompatibilities. And Visual Basic- barf me a river. Abiword supports 
plugins and scripting, in REAL languages. (I believe most Linux word 
processors offer some degree of nice Unix-y functions and extensions.)

>
>   I'm delighted with XessSE as a spreadsheet and I've found that Magicpoint
> does all *I* need to do for presentations.
>

I'll have a look at them. I like Star Office and Open Office, they have a lot 
of nice features. But I keep wandering back to AbiWord. It has a feature I've 
not seen anywhere else- "Paste unformatted". I use that a lot. My needs are 
pretty basic- page numbering, headers/footers, a bit of autotext, and word 
count. If I really want to go nuts, it has vi and Emacs key bindings. 
Combined with Klipper, the nicest clipboard tool I know of, I can crank out a 
1500-word article in record time. Klipper actually lets you see what is on 
it, unlike Brand MS, which holds up to 12 items identified only by the app 
they were made in. How useless can you get.

Carla