[Speakers] Automation via Abiword

[Adam Tauno Williams]

> >> This article seems to provide som e really cool automation stuff; if it
> >> works it might make an excellent topic for a presentation -
> >> http://www.advogato.org/person/msevior/diary.html?start=65
> >> It looks allot easier than automation with OOo.
> >But in the real world of creating word processing documents by users,
> >most of us are not command line folks.  We are mouse point and shoot
> >folks.  Who would use it?
> The intent of this facility is to manipulate the documents overall,
> not use the software and documents to interactively modify content.
> You might not need this, but others do; they are just as much part of
> the "Real world" as any other needs, and they improve the acceptance of
> the product overall.
> For example, if we want to take a whole bunch (hundreds, for example) of
> documents and convert them to HTML, does anyone want to sit there and
> hit LOAD and SAVE AS (and all the other mouseclicks that go with) a few
> hundred times to accomplish this? It is way better to write a script
> that will run through this, and use the package as a document converter.

Or a website that generates or manipulates complex documents (like real
work processing files rather than crappy HTML) .  Even a scripting
language like PHP offers calls to popen and pclose which would allow a
persistent instance of the application to be controlled.

My real question with this isn't the interface but if the functionality
of abiword is up the challenge;  something one would only discover by
taking it out for a drive.