AbiWord Weekly News #109, (2002, week 37, released 2002.09.16)

Welcome to issue 109 of the AbiWord Weekly News.

      Less Cute Maintainer of All Stable Things (Mark Gilbert) declares 1.0.3, Désir satisfait, "worst release, EVER!"*   Delayed by several binaries and couple of bugs, 1.0.3 is practically on it's way out the door!*

      Eye-Candy included in here, plus, for those of you that can't make it to chat:   "I have a fever 107...CELSIUS!, but I was inspired."*   Of course we worry about Marc's health, but you can't beat this with a cue stick!

      Oh, and if you'd like to know what's in this week's AWN, we have: more eye-candy, 1.0.3 on a roll, a POW in midZAP, Gilbertian thought, oh, and did anyone tell you today about 1.0.3 being tagged and tarballs already available?  The name is Prussian for "worst release, EVER!"*  I believe it to be an innuenduous reference*.

In this issue:

• Discussion
• Development
• Bug Update
• Latest Releases
• Special Interest

Editor(s) of this issue: E. A. Zen

Discussions

Traffic on the developer mailing list has settled at about 200-400 postings per week.

This week, interesting topics on the developer list included:

1. commit - Move Toolbar Strings into .string files :  Michael announces that he's moved the toolbar strings into the rest of the string files.   He explains that this is in preparation of moving to gettext mode, which shall shrink the executable by approximately 150Kb.   More intriguing is Andrew's look at how languages will need specific localisation, which touches on icons and bidi.   If you're interested in seeing the challenges of trying to build an international programme that lacks too many assumptions, this will be of greatest interest to you.

2. I18N and L10N pages on abisource.com :  Andrew voices his interest in addressing internationalisation issues, which, by the smell of things, may mean yet another top20 table, so, you better get your votes in now, before the Nederlandse bloat the vote ;-)

3. Coding standards :  Hey, Kids!   Anyone interested in adding code to the AbiSource may feel free to check out the doc directory (as in documentation).

4. Commit: SVG PLUGIN IMPORT :  Dom brings SVG to AbiWord, but if you want the screenshot, you'll have to move one down:   Re: SVG PLUGIN IMPORT

5. release-1-0-3 "Désir satisfait" tagged :  It's a pre-release source code only last minute check type of thing.   Read:  Not ready for primetime.   So, don't go about replacing your very comparable 1.0.2 yet.   Besides, this is, and I do quote the man, himself, "worst release, EVER!"

6. commit: 1st step on POW: Convert Aiksaurus to GTK+2 , commit: second step of making AiksaurusGTK+2 and commit: step 2 of AIksaurus -> gtk2 is complete :  rms (Rui not Dickie) is ZAPping a POW!   Convert Aiksaurus to GTK+2 is almost complete, and therefore, in grey.   The Force is strong on this one....

7. commit: Improvements to RTF table export. :  Microsoft's documentation leaves Martin wanting.   This is resulting in discussion what can and can't be supported, and how some of Monopolysoft's handling in both applications and documentation could result in a "postal" response.   Open Office's solution was, and this is loosely paraphrased with my inborn sense of sensationalism, "Screw this, we'll just work on .doc and let .rtf smoke itself to death."   In response to Dom's paraphrasing of my paraphrase, Caolan McNamara has decided to maintain OO's RTF branchlet.

Development

      The concept of a "Project Of the Week" is to single out tasks of major interest that outside developers might be interested in providing assistance to.   Until a "best way" of listing POWs come to mind, they shall be listed in a short description.   Any user interested is welcome to assist in tackling these POWs.   If you know someone who's interested, you can link directly to a POW, in order, they're pow1 through pow4.

Name:  Convert Aiksaurus to GTK+2
Description:  Step by step move old Aiksaurus to GTK+2 for HEAD (2.0...some day)
Advertisement:  It would be really good of you to be good and do a good porting of this good plugin so I would have good words for good instead of just good; I hope you understand that good.
Recommended Outline:
1)  Update aiksaurus's configure checks for GTK2.   AbiWord's configure scripts and ac-helpers have this code already, so hopefully it's a cut&paste job.   We have some auto* gurus and helpful folks on IRC if you need help.
2)  Update aiksaurus's GTK+ dialog to use GTK+2 widgets and functions.   This will probably not be too difficult, but I will shut my mouth lest I use it to shoot myself in the foot.   Mostly, this should be:
    a) Use g_signal_connect instead of gtk_signal_connect
    b) Use a GtkDialog instead of a GtkWindow
3)  If necessary, update AbiWord's plugin (abiword-plugins/tools/aiksaurus) to work with any changes made in #2.
Comments:  If you want, you can email dom for help, or even better - stop by on IRC so we can work in real-time: irc.gnome.org#abiword
System:  Linux (GTK+2)
Challenge level:  **... 2 stars out of 5
Current Hero:  Rui Miguel Silva Seabra

Name:  Style and/or Diction Plugins (bug 3281) (do either/or or both!)
Description:  build a plugin to allow Abiword to check style and diction
Advertisement:  me got no grammar fixer, help mes can't you?
Recommended Outline:  Create a plugin for AbiWord that allows the checking of style and diction.  The source code for the gnu style and diction tools is available here: http://www.gnu.org/software/diction/diction.html
      As a prototype you might be able to hack something using the AbiCmd plugin to wrap the style and diction tools.  The AikSaurus (Thesaurus) plugin should also be a helpful guide.
      When you get the basics working you could try to get Abiword to display green squiggle underlines to mark errors, or otherwise work on a good user interface.
Comments:  A great way to start playing with the AbiSource
System:  Any OS will be fine.
Challenge level:  ***.. 3 stars out of 5
Current Hero:  The mastery of Kung Fu has yet to appear.

Name:  Fix Windows printing boogs (bug 3239)
Description:  Tackle some or more of the various bugs that cause issues in attempting to print under Windows
Advertisement:  ????????????????????????????? (no, that's really the ad!)
Recommended Outline:  You must become magical to know how to fix this.
Comments:  "The problem is that printing on Windows is broken with several brand of printer drivers (see dependent bugs). It appears that with standard PostScript driver it does not happen. It appears also that version 0.9.6 had less problems than 1.0.1 so we might find out where the regression is bu diffing.
    "Please, be sure to read all the bug reports. Even partial fix are accepted.
    "Fixes must be done against STABLE tree and possibly ported to HEAD (the later can be done as a second step)."
      This comes from Hub
Notice:  This may already have been fixed with the libiconv upgrade, stay tuned!
System:  Windows
Challenge level:  ****. 4 stars out of 5
Current Hero: Not one MoFo yet has had the Huevos for this POW

Name:  More Windows Maintainers
Description:  Jordi could always use help
Advertisement:  Help free people from the oppression of MSWord today!
Recommended Outline:  You must become magical to know how to fix this.
Comments:  Wouldn't be a bad idea to start with the printing bug...
System:  Windows
Challenge level:  ****. 4 stars out of 5
Current Hero:  Jordi Mas

Bug Update

Bug Statistics

I'm leaving the link, guys, you put it up!

      This week, readers were anticipating my interview with the FreeBSD Daemon; however, breaking events, i.e. sensationalistic rumour going on in chat (irc.gnome.org#abiword if you're interested), have resulted in a quickie on the concept of "Gilbertian Thought."

      You might be thinking, "What is Gilbertian Thought?"   Well, let's go through the basics to get you started.   One day, AbiHacker Mark Gilbert was born; on that day, he had a thought that he remembered for all time:   What the #*@% is going on!?   This began an entire series of concept and philosophies, borrowing heavily from Anti-Solipsism, Neitzche and variations on Murphy's Law, and it all ends with Open Source, Meta-Humour and the Internet.

      Just to go through these in ways you can understand:

      Now, after having gone through all of that, let's combine them in groups.   When you combine variations on Murphy's Law, Neitzche and Anti-Solipsism, you get:   All things were doomed, so God went on permanent holiday, and you are only sustained by everyone else already being there.   Now, when you combine the Internet, Meta-Humour and Open Source, you get:   So, this guy emails everyone in the world with the promise of the most well known comedy routine of all time; it's punchline.vbs, which emails everyone else in the world.   Now, we combine the two thoughts and we get:   Without God, the Universe can only continue to exist on the Internet, and the more it is available, the better its chances for survival.

Now you're ready for your first Gilbertian exercise:   If a tree falls in a woods and nobody is around to see it, will you stream the sound in MP3 or Real Media?

Bug Votes

      These are the week's Top 20 Bugs in the categories problems and requests for enhancements.   Influence next week's results by casting your own votes.

Verified Bugs

      To get your name in neon, help QA the Bugs.   It's also great experience if you're working your way to a POW!   If you want your name rather than your email address to appear, drop me a line.

Latest Releases

This section to remain until 1.0.3 has been released.   Additionally, I'm thinking...next week.

Here are links to the latest official releases of AbiWord for various architectures and operating systems.

These are links to snapshot builds of AbiWord for a subset of the supported architectures/operating systems.

Note that the snapshot builds may not work (at all!), but are likely to include more features and have fewer bugs than (older) official releases. Use the official releases for "production systems" and the snapshot builds for testing and when you want to help with Bug triaging.

Special Interest --

From time to time, this section will contain essay-style text about various special interests of the AbiWord development.

SPECIAL NOTICE:   If you're working on a project that is related to, affects the development of or is affected by AbiWord, feel free to contact me