I borrowed my mother's OLPC. I thought it would be perfect for all
those documents that I have to read but don't want to print out. It's
cute and tiny and has a really nice reader mode.
I copied the files I needed to read to the laptop using scp. I tried
and tried to figure out how to open them using 'Write', which is based
on Abiword. I couldn't figure out how to open the documents.
I searched for documentation on Write and found out how to save
documents, how to share documents, etc, but not how to open documents
(see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Write).
Eventually I saw http://wiki.laptop.org/go/New_Users and learnt that
"No activity can open a file. You have to use the Journal activity
to open a saved file." The Journal is an application which keeps
track of everything you've done before. You may open anything you've
already opened.
I'm a little confused by this. The hardware is clearly designed to
support reading documents you didn't write yourself, as there's
not much use in having a reader mode to review your own prose.
I also can't imagine that someone would create a word processor
and not get around to implementing this functionality.
So it must have been done deliberately to 'protect' me. We all
know just how dangerous the written word can be.
However, there's a simple solution. Use the browser to open
the local file, and it will launch Write to view the document.
There are a couple of problems with this.
First, why introduce such a stupid security measure? Second, why
make it so easy to circumvent? I acknowledge that I'm personally
in a better position because it is easy to circumvent, but the
programmer in me believes that if you're going to prevent something,
you should damn well do the job right.
Is the goal to teach children how to get around lame security
measures? Is it really a project to create the next generation of
DRM hackers? I like to believe that there's a reason, but I
suspect that it's the usual reason: someone didn't clearly think
through an idea before implementing it.
